31 ms·

Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

• fallingfrog 4y ago
  I’m surprised- it’s the only kind I buy. And, on occasions when I get fast food, Burger King is the only place I visit since they’re the ones with plant based burgers.
• dkrich 4y ago
  Beyond meat breakfast sausage is an amazing product. Real sausage is gross to me and beyond tastes better and I never have to worry about eating a ground up bone. I make it on an almost daily basis. Expensive? Yes. Healthy? Maybe not but can’t be worse than real sausage. The burgers I’m not crazy about but still eat them from time to time. The chicken is gross.
• dubcanada 4y ago
  I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. I know it’s a bunch of stuff to make it look like meat, but it’s basically cow meat vs a burger containing 50 random items and chemicals that is worse or equal in nutritional content then cow. Like one impossible vs cow is 14g of fat vs 16g of fat. 370mg of sodium vs 90mg of sodium. They are not even that much better for you. Rather than trying to get meat eaters to eat a sort of cow type burger. Just make the regular veggie burgers better and cheaper. If people go to the store and see cow for $15 and a delicious veggie that is not sawdust for $10 some will buy the cheaper. And that’s all it takes is some. Slowly and over generations it could change to be predominantly. You can’t just shove a fake meat product down a meat lovers throat and call them a bad name if they hate it.
  • godzillabrennus 4y ago
    I loved the beyond burger and I’m a meat eater but after experimenting with it I also stopped eating them. The laundry list of ingredients and the contradictory information from educational institutions with respected names publishing about the impact on my body for consuming these turned me off. It’s good to know we can create delicious plant burgers. It sucks to doubt if they are even better for us than the meat.
    • Octabrain 4y ago
      I eat them every now and then. Any remarkable source about the negative impacts of it on the body that you would be kind to share? Thank you in advance.
  • litenboll 4y ago
    > 370mg of sodium vs 90mg of sodium. While I agree with your comment, this is very misleading unless you eat your steak raw and unsalted.
    • sofixa 4y ago
      Does the cooking itself add sodium? Salting isn't mandatory, and there are tons of spices you can add if you want some extra taste that aren't salt (i know this might be anathema to some who think seasoning starts and stops with salt and maybe pepper but it's true, try it out!).
      • rat9988 4y ago
        No amount of extra spices can replace salt.
        • pclmulqdq 4y ago
          370mg of sodium is the equivalent of a LOT of salt. I assume the beyond patty has some other sodium-containing ingredient in it.
        • sofixa 4y ago
          If your taste buds are accustomed to tons of salt, yes. But that's usually quite easy to adapt (over some time).
    • AmVess 4y ago
      A few tiny shakes out of a salt shaker isn't going to come close to 90mg. Figure about 40mg because I use a very small amount of it when I do use it. I'd have to eat 9 of mine to get the same salt content as a plant burger sold here. But wait, there's more! National brands of everything here load their products up with salt. Buns, condiments, fries, drinks are all packed with sodium. Under the guise of eating healthy, one can eat a loaded up plant burger w/fries and a cola and consume a day' worth of salt in one sitting. 370mg of salt in a single patty is an absurd amount of salt.
  • defrost 4y ago
    > but it’s basically cow meat vs a burger containing 50 random items and chemicals that is worse or equal in nutritional content then cow. Is that the central north american urban choice palette? Here in rural Australia our meat intake (albeit < %20 of total food intake) is lamb from the farm, ham from the farm, fish from the ocean, camel, kangaroo, goat. Camel and goat are introduced feral animals that overstock and get routinely culled - they're not feed lot cattle, and anybody eating them is arguably doing the local environment a favour by denting the numbers. Kangaroos are culled by population monitoring estimates, they have a tendancy to explode in numbers in the good years and die by the hundreds of thousands in the dry years that follow. It's decades at least since I ate meat that didn't come from a known location, killed and butched | filleted by someone known, and passed on either directly or through a single known intermediary. That said - kangaroo, camel, and goat make an interesting alternative to beef - the meat is lean and comes at a much lower environmental impact.
  • nodding_smiling 4y ago
    As I understand it, most of the ingredients are just extracts from or purifications of natural products. I'm not just saying this to defend plant-based meats - it's true of many chemicals with scary-looking names in other foods. "Calcium pantothenate", for instance, is just a salt of the essential vitamin B5. "Ascorbic acid" is vitamin C. And so on. And it's worth bearing in mind that the ingredients list of a steak would be just one item - beef - but red meat consumption is nonetheless associated with increases in certain cancers and cardiovascular problems. This is even more true for processed red meat which, realistically, represents a big share of most people's red meat consumption.
    • prepend 4y ago
      Here’s the ingredient list for a beyond burger [0], I don’t think your point is relevant, as while the ingredient aren’t necessarily scary, there are many of them and the product is highly processed. “Water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, dried yeast, cocoa butter, methylcellulose, and less than 1% of potato starch, salt, potassium chloride, beet juice color, apple extract, pomegranate concentrate, sunflower lecithin, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, vitamins and minerals (zinc sulfate, niacinamide [vitamin B3], pyridoxine hydrochloride [vitamin B6], cyanocobalamin [vitamin B12], calcium pantothenate). Peas are legumes. People with severe allergies to legumes like peanuts should be cautious when introducing pea protein into their diet because of the possibility of a pea allergy. Contains no peanuts or tree nuts.” [0] https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/products/the-beyond-burger https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/products/the-beyond-burger
      • isignal 4y ago
        The point does seem relevant. Most of the non chemical ingredients are recognizable natural or naturally derived (rice/pea protein). methylcellulose is the only odd one out.
        • prepend 4y ago
          Hamburger Pattie’s have a single ingredient: beef. I thought it wasn’t relevant because the ingredient list is still complex compared to cow burgers. It’s nice that the long ingredient is mostly recognizable, but the point is that there’s a long list of ingredients, not that the ingredient list included toxic waste or something.
  • chimprich 4y ago
    > I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. If you listed the "ingredients" in a cow, you'd also have a list that was as long as the proverbial limb. Proteins, fats, sugars, enzymes, hormones, antibiotics (quite likely with factory farming), microorganisms... it's just our labelling laws that mean they get to be lumped together as "meat". They're still chemicals assembled by organic nanotech. We know some of them are bad. E.g. there's a link between red meat consumption and colorectal cancer, and nitrites in bacon etc. also increase cancer risk. > Slowly and over generations it could change to be predominantly. Slowly over generations is really not the approach we need for tackling climate change though. > You can’t just shove a fake meat product down a meat lovers throat and call them a bad name if they hate it. And I don't think anyone is doing that.
    • pclmulqdq 4y ago
      The chemicals in every plant and animal are a long, complicated list. If, as you suggest, we elaborate them out, "mushroom," "fig," amd even "carrot" get really weird. The point of the ingredients list is to backtrack from the food in front of you to a list of known safe components. Like it or not, "cow" is one of those - humans have been eating cow meat for millions of years.
      • chairhairair 4y ago
        1. Humans have not been eating cows produced by modern methods for millions of years. Cow diet, genetics, and lifecycle is quite unnatural at this point. (This is the overwhelming bulk of cow consumption, of course your local micro farm produces cows more similar to ancient cows) 2. Humans haven’t been eating cow (or meat generally) on this scale ever before in history. 3. Even despite the above, we genuinely don’t know to what extent baseline human health is dependent on traditional diet. It’s not impossible that there exists a modern radical diet that greatly improves health and longevity without including any “natural” foods.
    • prepend 4y ago
      > If you listed the "ingredients" in a cow, you'd also have a list that was as long as the proverbial limb. No, I don’t think so. Most of my beef has a single ingredient: grass. Some have two ingredients: grass, grain (there may be different grains though). Even if you listed the molecules, the ingredient list for beef is much shorter than beyond burgers.
  • bantunes 4y ago
    > I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm Cow meat has a long list of ingredients that aren't disclosed either: antibiotics, growth hormones, etc. > They are not even that much better for you. I don't think they're going for the health angle - this is junk food, just not from a live animal. No one is saying you can live off plant-based burgers exclusively, they're an indulgence, and they're aiming for the "close enough" crowd that doesn't mind indulgences. > Just make the regular veggie burgers better and cheaper. It'll be hard to compete in price until they reach a certain scale, and there's the whole point of livestock subsidies: https://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=livestock https://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=live... > You can’t just shove a fake meat product down a meat lovers throat and call them a bad name if they hate it. Not sure where the shoving and name-calling is taking place, but there's actually good feedback from meat eaters for a lot of Beyond Meat products, for example.
    • sph 4y ago
      > I don't think they're going for the health angle - this is junk food, just not from a live animal. No one is saying you can live off plant-based burgers exclusively, they're an indulgence, and they're aiming for the "close enough" crowd that doesn't mind indulgences. Wait until the big players like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Nestle & co. enter the party, and see major lobbying to promote this ultra-processed food as healthy because #PlantBased, like they've done for decades with their other products. The marketing for this stuff has already been extreme in the United Kingdom in the past couple years, with the real deal seen as vile and immoral, after being labelled as unhealthy since the 60s due to shoddy dietary science. After all, there is not much money or processed products you can make off real meat. With plant-based fake meat, the potential profits are unimaginable.
  • alphanullmeric 4y ago
    Vegan food: taste, healthy, filling - pick 2
    • theshrike79 4y ago
      These are all three: https://www.beanit.fi/en/our-products/ https://www.beanit.fi/en/our-products/ It's just processed fava beans, nothing unhealthy. Their tex-mex mince (not on the english pages for some reason) is superior to minced meat in my opinion. It keeps in the fridge for weeks (can't do that with raw meat) and the texture is pretty similar. Less fat, more protein.
      • alphanullmeric 4y ago
        Replace healthy with unprocessed then. Vegans sure love their processed foods.
        • inkcapmushroom 4y ago
          Of course it's going to be processed unless you're getting it straight from the field. That website's ingredient list for their unflavored grounds: Water, pea protein, fava bean (9 %, Finland), rapeseed oil. Looks fairly minimal to me. "Vegans love their processed foods" is a weird take, I don't think they likely eat more processed foods than your typical American.
          • stronglikedan 4y ago
            The ingredients aren't the main problem. The main problem is that a lot of nutritional value is stripped out during the various industrial processes. This causes one to not feel as sated as they would from the same caloric amount of non-processed food, and causes overeating.
          • alphanullmeric 4y ago
            What are the ingredients in potato fries?
  • broast 4y ago
    In my experience, usually the ingredients in fake burger meat are mostly recognizable nutritious plants, at least in the stuff I buy.
  • oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    > A healthy, active adult needs between 200 and 500 mg of sodium per day. (https://www.lifespan.org/lifespan-living/how-much-sodium-day-do-you-need https://www.lifespan.org/lifespan-living/how-much-sodium-day...) > Adults should eat no more than 2.4g sodium a day (https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/salt-nutrition/ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/salt-nutrit...) I'm no nutritionalist, but doesn't that suggest you could eat nothing but 6 of these burgers every day and still be within the recommended sodium intake? Sure, nobody's eating nothing but these burgers, but nobody (I hope) is eating 6 of them every single day — in and of themselves, their sodium content may seem scary relative to cow meat, but it's not really that bad.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • dpcx 4y ago
    The goal of the "meat replacements" that are Beyond and Impossible was never being better for you (from what I recall). It was about offsetting the footprint of raising cattle.
  • inkcapmushroom 4y ago
    > Just make the regular veggie burgers better and cheaper. These burgers are out there already, for what it's worth. Veggie burgers nowadays are very tasty, very healthy, and mostly made of ground/diced vegetables and legumes. But they don't have the marketing hype that comes with "plant based food that bleeds!" so meat eating individuals didn't and don't even consider them as an option.
  • Moldoteck 4y ago
    Even worse. If meat is not from some local farmers(and even from them), it can have a ton of antibiotics and other things to increase muscle mass, reduce fat, etc... Hell, even some vegetables like potatoes/tomatoes can have some awful chemicals in them( Sometimes I feel envy of my grandparents that grow vegetables on their land))
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • dirtyid 4y ago
    Pretty much this, I don't care if taste is 50-80% facsimile, but I expect cost to be so as well, and nutrition profile to be superior.
  • yunwal 4y ago
    I feel so much better knowing my burger is 50% antibiotics.
• tannhaeuser 4y ago
  Can confirm, since about last year, plant-based meat is found with heavy discounts at my place (DE). I'm not a vegan or sth but I'm eating just not that much meat (maybe once a week). Why would you eat burgers, or any meal sold as intransparent compound of fat, sugar, protein anyway if your intent is to eat healthily or sustainably? There are delicious funghi and vegetables instead. Why would you replace milk by some branded food such as allpro or whatever? Though I haven't tasted it yet, oat milk might be ok, is being offered when ordering coffee all the time here; i just don't drink my coffee with milk, at all. More and more people claim lactose intolerance; which they have because they stopped drinking milk in the first place rather than because milk is bad would be my guess.
  • easygenes 4y ago
    I have a strong preference for Bonsoy soy milk over the flavor and texture of just about any alternative (including dairy). It is made in the traditional way in Japan. Just appreciate that you have to shake it at least 10X more than you think you ought to, as otherwise it is a watery mess followed up by soy goop at the bottom. It is better for not being homogenized like everything else, so it is a small price to pay.
• hannob 4y ago
  How strange, we massively subsidize meat production, we don't even consider letting meat producers pay for the externalities they cause, and then plant-based alternatives have a hard time competing. It's a real mystery.
  • LatteLazy 4y ago
    We also massively subsidise plant based food production. And non-food production like tobacco...
    • aradox66 4y ago
      Most subsidized plant agriculture is used to feed livestock
    • csempecsacsi 4y ago
      It's about a 10:1 ratio in favor of livestock, last time I checked the EU CAP.
      • mrguyorama 4y ago
        Does that consider corn subsidies a beef subsidy? America would be subsidizing corn production whether or not beef existed. The corn belt is VERY politically powerful, and america values having a basic food industry that is impossible to blockade in wartime. If beef producers stop needing that corn, we will just find more corn syrup and ethanol in random places.
  • jhanschoo 4y ago
    I don't see it purely as a policy problem. Plant-based meats are primarily focused on the US market, and so outside the US these brands can't compete in price either for price-conscious consumers, lacking supply chains that employ cheap domestic labor.
    • KaiserPro 4y ago
      > Plant-based meats are primarily focused on the US market, [citation needed] fake meat is well established in the EU. Quorn & linda mcartney, have been in the market for many years(20+). Quorn mince is cheaper than beef mince(in the UK) where beef production is subsidised.
• secretsatan 4y ago
  I did try some recently, and actually, it was better than I expected. the thing that put me off for ages is we have had decades of really terrible attempts at vegi things that we're told are just as good as meat, but we all know fell far short of expectations.
• lbriner 4y ago
  Artificial meat is a one take on the sustainability problem but a more pragmatic approach that will not solve it but make a big dent is to reduce meat consumption instead of replacing it. Sainsburys in the UK ran an advert at one point where e.g. add 50% red beans and 50% meat to your casserole. Have one vegan day per week etc. Imagine if we could reduce meat consumption by even 50% by just being more disciplined? It would make a massive difference, we can then treat meat as a special treat so if it costs a bit more and is reared in a more friendly way then that is also good. What might then happen is that as people get used to eating veggie/vegan, they start to realise, as I did, that they don't miss meat that much (I married a vegetarian). I have meat maybe once per week if I am out but otherwise mostly veggie (and cheat with some fish too!)
  • armada651 4y ago
    If sustainability is the goal then convinving people to switch from beef to fish and chicken is a lot easier. People don't have to go full vegetarian to make a big impact on reducing their greenhouse emissions. I feel like that's the most pragmatic approach right now. I think the view that the only sustainable option is the vegetarian one isn't helpful. Especially since, depending on your diet, a vegetarian diet is not necessarily sustainable.
    • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      The Lancet-EAT report puts some numbers on this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_health_diet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_health_diet Basically reducing red meat, dairy and starchy vegetables is good for the planet and your health. Vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, flexitarian can all work though and anything in moderation is fine.
• michaelteter 4y ago
  And we don't need fake meat. It's just something that the food industry can make and sell to us instead of us just eating stuff that grows in the earth. If you want something with a texture similar to meat, many mushrooms will do the job. If you want something reminiscent of ground beef, quinoa with seasoning will suffice. However, limiting yourself to vegetarian approaches of recreating meat dishes, then you are missing out on what good vegetarian food can be. There are now enough great restaurants (as well as endless numbers of cook books) which can help you find very satisfying, or even excitingly new and wonderful meals that involve basic natural plants (and legumes etc.) The problem for many people is they only know the "meat and potatoes" perspective. But they want to reduce their meat consumption, so they buy the meat replacement thing; and that replacement is not particularly healthy, nor is it usually a believable substitute. (It's hard to recreate the exact pleasure that comes from animal fats and proteins.)
  • Nursie 4y ago
    And we don’t need people engaging in vegetarian purity contests and gatekeeping. And we don’t have to eat the same thing all the time. Using a meat substitute is not limiting yourself, you have no idea what people eat on other days, it can simply be an enjoyable part of a varied diet.
    • johnwalkr 4y ago
      Someone always makes a comment like this about meat substitutes. Wether you pick the vegetarian or meat-based option, there’s a lot of reasons why someone would choose a processed slice, sausage or whatever over cooking from scratch.
  • viraptor 4y ago
    We don't need any kind of specific food. Some people just like it, even if we know the alternatives. For example I enjoy both meet and vegan food, but will take Grill'd Impossible burger over a beef one. The good plant based burgers reached the level of being good on their own for me, not as a replacement.
  • cr3ative 4y ago
• lampe3 4y ago
  Can we add an "in the US" at the end? Since for EU countries this is not true. I'm living in sweden now and lived in germany and poland. Plant-based meat products are growing in numbers and the price of meat is going so high that its cheaper to buy the plant-based one. In Germany one producer of meat sausages want to turn 100% plant based[1]. I will not go into the whats better and not for you. Since this highly depends on not just one food category. You can eat "Vegan" and still eat unhealthy and you can eat meat and be healthy. The body is to complex on just saying is something is healthy or unhealthy on one factor. [1] https://www.ruegenwalder.de/vegetarische-und-vegane-produkte https://www.ruegenwalder.de/vegetarische-und-vegane-produkte
  • Semaphor 4y ago
    Your link doesn't support your statement. Where does it say they want to turn 100% plant based?
    • jansan 4y ago
      I have not found any news that would support that claim. They sold more vegan products in 2021 than meat products, but nowhere can I find anything that they aim at selling only vegan products.
      • onli 4y ago
        Source is https://app.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/mittelstand/ruegenwalder-muehle-chef-godo-roeben-die-fleischlobby-will-veggie-wurst-verhindern/24528852.html https://app.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/mittelstand/ruegenw..., a "we would if consumers choose that route".
        • Semaphor 4y ago
          > Letztlich wird das der Verbraucher entscheiden. Vorstellen können wir uns alles. which is far better translated to > In the end, the consumer will decide. We can imagine [doing] anything. Which is extremely noncommittal (and also the only thing that makes sense)
• decremental 4y ago
  I like how these articles come out to tell us something most of us knew from the start. There is something to be said about the wisdom of repugnance. You're supposed to hear "fake meat" and think "gross." That is why most people react that way.
• sacnoradhq 4y ago
  It is difficult to get someone to understand the contributions of climate change, antibiotic resistance, and pandemics when their somatic addiction depend on their not understanding it. It's depressing to see such ignorance here and ignorance rationalized.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• Semaphor 4y ago
  My favorite meat replacements are smoked tofu, and soy flakes. Tofu I sometimes use to substitute meats (We are eating keto, so it’s very easy to eat a lot of meat, trying to lower that amount a bit), sometimes simply by itself. It excels in both of those. Soy flakes are always a ground beef replacement (not in a burger, only when the meat is loose), when properly spicing them during rehydration (MSG is even more important than usual here), they come close to the real thing in some ways, better in others. If they weren’t so carby, and now sold out for several months, I’d completely replace ground beef ;)
• leke 4y ago
  Plant based alternatives either equal or exceed meat prices by portion, so there's no real insentive for me to buy them.
• syzygyhack 4y ago
  That's news to me. Looks like the US is speaking for the world again. You have bigger problems with your food than whether or not it is plant-based, I promise you that. In the UK and the rest of Europe, plant-based meat alternatives have been growing in popularity, quality, and variety over the last decade. It's never been easier for someone to go vegan without "giving up" their favourite foods.
• Brajeshwar 4y ago
  What are your thoughts on those companies making plant-based "meat -- food for dogs?"
• daveoc64 4y ago
  Of course, this is in the US. Impossible doesn't sell its products in Europe (or none of the good ones anyway). Here we have things like Burger King UK which has a more or less 50/50 plant based/meat split on its major products advertised in store. Or McDonald's that has a dedicated menu of 100% Vegan options: https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/menu/vegan.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/menu/vegan.html
  • flakiness 4y ago
    Aren't these experimental menus? I read McPlant in theUS went away after one-year trial. Would love to give Double McPlant® a try.
  • myspy 4y ago
    In Germany they introduced the McVegan a couple years ago. It wasn't great with a weird patty. They changed that to Veganburger TS sometime ago https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/product/veganburger-ts-2570.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/product/veganburger-ts-25... The Veganburger is really good. The patty has a nice bite to it and the sauce tastes great. Great alternative.
  • endanke 4y ago
    I don't know why but I just can't keep myself from laughing at the name of McPlant. (I do think plant based meat is a great thing though, it's just a hilarious name.)
• guggle 4y ago
  Good ! Enough with the industrial, processed, fake stuff.
• twuoi423u4324 4y ago
  I've never understood what the point of "vegan meat" is. It tastes terrible, and often leads to lazy recipes. Indian food is super-delicious without using any of these things.
• tomcam 4y ago
  > Then came the nose-biting fiasco You know you’re having a bad year when Bloomberg includes that in their coverage
• Yaggo 4y ago
  When I started a vegan diet 20 years ago and asked for tofu in my local grocery store, they didn't even know the term (this happened in small town in Finland). Nowadays you can find a wide selection of various plant-based, meat-imitating products in every grocery store, even in small ones located in rural areas. Looks wildly successful to me, not a flop.
• nottorp 4y ago
  [Whine] Is it? I mean every time I check out a so called vegetarian restaurant I get ... plant hamburgers. And I'm in Eastern Europe, I'm pretty sure there are hundreds of traditional recipes that don't contain any meat. The real vegetarian food seems to be dead, unless you cook it at home. [End Whine]
• throwaway22032 4y ago
  Whole chicken, stick it on a tray, whack it in the oven, chop some onions if you fancy it. Bam, not far off 1kg of meat for 5 GBP. Healthy, tasty, keeps in the fridge for a good amount of time, can be used for sandwiches, roast dinners, snacking cold or hot, whatever.
• stuaxo 4y ago
  This sounds like the "trough of disillusionment", I'd say that means things only increase from there.
• Felmo 4y ago
  It took my lokal German supermarket ages to even offer something. 8 meter of pure meat products vs. 30 cm of vegi options...
• A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I have a personal opinion on the trend itself and it is basically that it is trying to imitate something, while it could ( and some would argue should ) be its own thing with its own flavor ( and everything that goes along with it ). It is a little like me trying to re-live to experience of hotdogs for the sake of nostalgia. I suppose I could, but the why goes back into focus. Why are we doing this? Is it to appease the mass consumer? Is it to make a temporary pitstop on humanity's hopeful trajectory that does not include self-destruction? I just fail to see the appeal and I tried some of the products out of sheer curiosity. Why can't we just have falafel, bean patties and so on? Why does it have to 'feel' like meat?
• cultofmetatron 4y ago
  not surprised. I wanted to get some beyond burgers. The regular grass beef burgers were CHEAPER. until we start subsidizing plant based meat the way we do meat, its just not gong to take off. Its not an even playing field.
• karol 4y ago
  [flagged]
• lonelyasacloud 4y ago
  At least in the UK, the plant-based meat business appears to fall between two stools. In the high-end niche market, plant-based meat is up against organic, grass-fed, free-range, 30-day aged and the like. While itself frequently including awful ingredients like Palm Oil, being (of at best) unknown impact on health and never (so far) being anything other than just about *acceptable* in terms of taste and texture to a meat eater. While at the other end where there is little concern for animal welfare, climate change, health and even taste. It costs more for the same quantity. To achieve its potential, the plant-based meat industry either needs to figure out how to do better than millions of years of evolution and target the high-end. Or figure out how to churn out mass-market products at a lower cost than the dead-animal equivalent. (For my money, churning it out at least appears tractable)
• harel 4y ago
  In the UK there is a huge variety of plant based meat options and supermarkets have very large sections dedicated to that. I do not know however, if the percentage of people still consuming this has increased or decreased recently. I know from my experience (as an omnivore who can enjoy a veggie burger as much as he enjoys chicken schnitzel), I found out those plant based meat substitutes are so processed (and have an endless list of ingredients) that in comparison meat seemed like the healthier option in many cases.
• goethes_kind 4y ago
  I would really like to know whether there are some biological reasons why some people love meat and others don't. I have met so many veggie munching folk of various flavours who upon questions would confess, that they didn't like meat that much anyway.
  • Vinnl 4y ago
    It's been the other way around for me. I used to really like meat when I started eating vegetarian, and made it a policy to still satisfy those cravings if they got strong. But over time, having not eaten that much meat, almost every time I give in to the cravings I'm disappointed by the taste, and the cravings don't come back. I figure it might just be an acquired taste to some extent.
• roland35 4y ago
  I think it should be clarified as a "flop" versus sky-high expectations. Plant-based options have exploded in the past few years, and not just for meats but dairy too. I often get vegan options (lactose intolerant) and find it much easier to find a good option now than a few years ago.
• koliber 4y ago
  When my wife and I tried these meat alternatives -- a burger, and Dunkin' Donuts breakfast sausage -- our conclusion was that they have a real chance at replacing low quality meats. If you've ever eaten good fresh sausage or a quality burger, you know how it differs from the fast-food burgers and breakfast sausages served at chain restaurants. Beyond and Impossible will have a hard time competing agains the quality stuff. But compared to the lower-quality meats, they hold up just fine in terms of taste. As long as they can bring the price down, they'll do alright in the non-quality meat markets. I predict that if they can get their unit economic down, they can sign deals with many mass-market restaurants and gradually use their non-meat as filler for real meat. Ratchet that up over time, don't tell anyone, and all of a sudden, everyone is eating less meat. They are having a hard time convincing the world that their product tastes better and is healthier than meat. They won't have as hard of a time convincing the world that their product taste better and is healthier than currently-used meat fillers at mass-market outlets. But that just does not sound like an exciting business plan for a VC founded California company, so unless the ego steps aside, it will be a hard win.
  • inferiorhuman 4y ago
    I'd flip that on its head and venture to guess they can do well against most meat except the nicest stuff. It works a treat for the super low end stuff (e.g. fast food like McDonalds or Burger King). For a lot of dishes I'd cook meat is a background flavor (e.g. mapo tofu) where the nuances of super fresh ground meat would be lost and for that Impossible did well enough. The issue I had is that Impossible has a more beefy flavor when I'd typically use pork in that dish. For the mass market high end stuff I'd expect lab grown meat to be the thing to keep an eye on because… As long as they can bring the price down, they'll do alright in the non-quality meat markets. Prices are going to continue to increase for the things that go into meat production. Water. Fertilizer. Grain or grass. Depending on how things go I'd bet that the fake meat would only have to keep their costs steady to compete on price.
  • acdha 4y ago
    I think this is the key. This isn’t a business which will be an overnight success but it’ll grow over time, especially as climate change, water shortages, or rising fuel costs start making real beef more expensive.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  Don’t think I ever managed to finish one of those seitan fake chicken things, just always feels where chicken would be the lighter part of the dish you’re replacing that with stodge and it creeps up on you with an unpleasant fullness sensation. Decided no more fake things after noticing that.
• totalhack 4y ago
  Aside from taste not always being there, biggest problem for me is some of the crazy ingredient lists. Part of what I'd look for when occasionally avoiding meat is a clean/healthy alternative. I can find this in something like a black bean veggie burger, but some of these plant based options seem loaded with unfamiliar ingredients. Just my limited perception from a few things I considered at the grocery store but put back down.
• plaguepilled 4y ago
  I feel like I'm going crazy sometimes with the fake meat convos. Fake meat is fantastic and I sometimes pick it over regular meat. It's sort if its own thing in my mind, but I get way less of a carb crash from it. I dunno if that's actually caused by anything or just a placebo though.
• m0llusk 4y ago
  Alternatively, plant based meat products are doing quite well in the US. The problem is that the corporate world, being essentially incapable of moderation and self-control, banked on a quick ramp up in growth leading to economies of scale in the very short term. What went wrong was that hyped bet on quick growth. This is a common problem in the US because fast growth brings better returns especially for investors and so is more desirable than less risky slow growth. This means there will most likely be a period of shake up in the industry which will be followed by leadership being taken up by more reasonable producers who have the capacity to tolerate modest profits and a period of relatively slow growth as the market gets a foothold. Venture capitalists should take note of this demonstration of how growth is not the only important variable and fast growth is not always most desirable, especially with relatively new products and market segments.
• exabrial 4y ago
  First mistake: stop calling it meat. It’s _not_. That alone would satiate a lot of problems.
• jacquesm 4y ago
  I'm not sure that this is true but for me personally it doesn't work. I prefer to eat vegetables as 'themselves' rather than to fake it, it just doesn't really sit right with me to expend a ton of energy and processing to make one food into another when the original is just fine. So what if it isn't meat and doesn't look like meat. It feels a bit like a surrogate for a drug: if you're at the point that you mentally need the surrogate you are still not facing the problem squarely, at that point you're telling one part of your brain that 'this is meat' and another part of your brain that 'this is vegan'.
• rubyist5eva 4y ago
  I was vegan for 3 years and even then I couldn't stomach this garbage. Give me plain ground beef over this hyper-processed garbage any day. The best "meat alternatives" were always the ones that didn't try to replicate taste and texture of meat and did their own things. Quinoa burgers are delicious.
• ChoGGi 4y ago
  I don't eat meat, nor do I have any inclination to eat fake meat. I'm curious who thought people would rather eat more expensive fake meat compared to cheaper actual meat?
  • gwbas1c 4y ago
    IMO: The real problem is that the plant-based-meat crowd really let their imaginations run away without using much common sense. The market for plant-based fake meat is much smaller than they believe. They thought they would displace animal based options on menus; but instead they displayed traditional veggie burgers and ticked off the people who should have been their biggest advocates. IMO: Cultured meat has a much better chance at displacing traditional meat. You can substitute it, because it's the same exact thing, and it won't make any difference.
  • mason55 4y ago
    I’d love to switch to fake meat, even if it is more expensive. But it’s also usually less healthy (more sodium, more calories per serving). If someone makes a fake lean chicken breast or 93%ground turkey then I’d happily switch over.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    There was a massive market for meat substitutes long before Impossible and Beyond hit the scene. So I guess the real question is, why would you assume no one did any market research before bringing these products to market?
• Gordonjcp 4y ago
  I think the only "fake meat" plant-based meat I've enjoyed was a Gr*ggs vegan sausage roll, which was genuinely a great flavour and texture. A lot of the things like the "Impossible Burger" type stuff just tastes disgusting, horrible overprocessed crap. Edit: The Ikea "veg balls" are actually pretty good too.
• maury91 4y ago
  I'm not a fan of plant-based meat, this is most likely because of my culture ( I'm Sardinian ), we do have many meat based dishes and many plant based dishes, and honestly I don't see the need to cook the meat based ones with processed food that tries to replicate the taste and consistency of meat. I believe that if you don't want to eat meat there's a world of recipes that do not involve meat and are made to elevate the delicate taste of veggies. I've grow up with eating whole foods, we cook everything from the base ingredients, sometimes we even make those base ingredients ( for example we have sheeps and cows and we make milk, and out of milk we make cheese ), personally for me pre-packaged food appears as the sub-optimal choice
  • georgyo 4y ago
    Meat tastes really good. I think there are many people who want to eat less meat but really enjoy meat. I am one of those people.
    • jononomo 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • Spivak 4y ago
        I know the new studies that walk back the "read meat is bad for your health" but I haven't heard anything about the environmental impact which puts beef at about 10x worse than chicken and 50x worse than tofu.
      • chollida1 4y ago
        > It tastes great, Agreed:) > it is the healthiest possible food, and it is the most environmentally friendly option. These two require a huge citation. I've never heard of meat being the most healthy food and I've only ever heard of how its one of the worst foods for the environment due to the huge amount of land and water it takes to grow. I've always grown up learning that greens(vegetables are the healthiest food you can eat). What citations would you put forward to show that meat isf the most environmentally friendly food you can eat and the healthiest food you can eat? I found this: https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/study-environmental-impact-meat-vs-veggies-staggering/#:~:text=The%20environmental%20impact%20of%20meat,the%20water%20impact%20of%20nuts https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/study-environment.... > The environmental impact of meat versus vegetables is staggering. A serving size of meat compared to a serving size of vegetables is linked to 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions. It also takes 100 times the amount of land as consuming vegetables. Unprocessed red meat has twice the water impact of nuts.
• themoonisachees 4y ago
  My perspective from France: Fake meat has never been so available. There are several restaurants that serve it that are not your "we are explicitly vegan" restaurants, burger king served some, and all major supermarkets have it in stock in the freezers right next to normal meat. However, the price is still unattainable. A few days ago i bought patties to make burgers and meat was about 1 euro/100g and plant meat was about twice as expensive. For as long as it is more expensive, people are going to buy real meat, unless they're trying it (in terms of taste i think it's fine) or vegan.
  • lawlorino 4y ago
    Similar story here in Finland, real meat is just so much cheaper than the fake veggie stuff. My theory was this was supply chains (being physically far away from the rest of Europe) and a relatively small market size, but interesting you have the same price discrepancy in France which I guess has neither of these issues. Just speculating here but do you think it is because of the strong food culture and links to identity in France?
    • bunderbunder 4y ago
      I would guess that it is because real meat is a commodity, and fake meat is not. That means that fake meat companies do not enjoy the same economies of scale, nor do they experience the same kinds of market forces that help keep prices down.
    • tarsinge 4y ago
      I find people around me very averse to "fake"/replacement of a real product, there is no way it will replace meat in cooking. What I don't get is why it's not more successful in fast foods. In that setting you are already forgetting yourself for eating not healthy, and French paradoxically love fast food (McDonald's has a strong presence here for example). At Burger King I find it's nearly indistinguishable from real meat, so it should be a no brainer.
      • joshjje 4y ago
• andersco 4y ago
  One very local anecdote that seems to contradict this: my local Trader Joe’s is nearly always out of Impossible burgers. On many occasions, I have stood in line at the shelf where they are kept, waiting for the person who is unboxing them and supposed to be stocking shelves but basically just handing directly to customers. Maybe not representative of the larger marketplace but at least in that store they are the proverbial hotcakes.
  • telotortium 4y ago
    I think that Beyond is feeling the pinch more, because it just tastes terrible. Impossible isn't as good as a real burger, but it's significantly better than Beyond, and Impossible is fine (discounting the cost) for filling out a spaghetti sauce or something where you can't taste the meat that well. So I think it's consumer preferences at work here
    • yunwal 4y ago
      Impossible, to me, tastes better than most grocery store burgers. Certainly better than the cook-from-frozen ones that it’s closest to in texture, plus they crisp up better on the grill. If it were as cheap I don’t think I’d ever have another beef burger unless it was from a butcher/steakhouse.
• jononomo 4y ago
  I am an advocate of the all-beef diet. I didn't consume a single calorie from any plant-based source for the entirety of 2021 and I ended the year feeling fantastic and in the best shape of my life. For some reason, I went off the "carnivore diet" in 2022, but I just gained belly fat and got lower back pain, so in September of 2022 I went back on it and this time I plan to stick with it for the rest of my life. I buy my beef by the 1/4 cow and I find that it is a surprisingly time-efficient and economical way to eat. Of course, the health benefits are marvelous as well. Everyone thinks that I must be constipated or about to die of heart disease, but I have the smoothest digestion I've ever had in my life, I absolutely never fart, and my cholesterol and blood work is exquisite. I just wish more people were open to even hearing about, let alone eating, an all-beef diet. It is incredible the amount of resistance I get to my way of eating.
  • spicymaki 4y ago
    Even if all-beef cured every disease know to man it still would not be sustainable. Curiously: how do you get your vitamin C?
    • jononomo 4y ago
      Fresh meat contains vitamin C. Also, vitamin C is needed for the synthesis of collagen and an all-beef diet contains a lot of collagen. Scurvy is only a problem for people like sailors in the old days who did not have access to fresh meat on extremely long voyages. Finally, consider the fact that human beings have lived in northern climates through ice ages that lasted a thousand years.
      • spicymaki 4y ago
        A quick consultation with Dr. Google states caveats to what you are claiming (this is data from a carnivore advocate [1] btw.): you have to consume 2.2lbs of grass fed beef to get ~25mcg of Vitamin C. The daily recommended value is 75mg [almost double if you are pregnant] (you need 1000mcg to equal 1mg). The WHO recommends at least 45mg a day to prevent scurvy. 1 decently sized orange would cover the recommended daily value. Beef seems woefully inadequate to me at least. The next fascinating question: how much does 2.2 lbs of grass fed beef cost? Just looking at the prices for fresh organic steak is almost $40 per pound at my local supermarket. That is an amazingly expensive diet! Imagine feeding a family of four on that! That is almost $400 per day, $2800 per week, $146,000 a year in just food costs. Yikes! [1] https://www.doctorkiltz.com/vitamin-c-on-carnivore-diet/ https://www.doctorkiltz.com/vitamin-c-on-carnivore-diet/
• xwdv 4y ago
  I hate these fake meats. It has led to the death of legitimately good alternatives like black bean burgers, all because vegans and vegetarians are obsessed with pretending they can eat something very similar to animals. So now it seems every restaurant only wants to offer fake meat.
• Quillbert182 4y ago
  I will not eat fake meat (including lab grown meat) for one simple reason: it weirds me out. I will happily eat tofu, black bean burgers, and the like, but I cannot emotionally bring myself to eat fake meat.
• camillomiller 4y ago
  Has anyone from Bloomberg set foot on a random general purpose supermarket in Germany as of late? As a vegetarian I prefer to get my proteins from eggs, vegetables, beans, Asian-style preparations such as tofu and Tempeh, or from soya derivates. That said, once in a while the low-sodium soy schnitzel is a welcome addition and it just tastes pretty good.
• kup0 4y ago
  This editorialized link title and the article's headline itself doesn't really match the article's content (as is increasingly common it seems). Sure, Beyond Meat has had lower sales- but soon after they mention that retail sales of Impossible meat products increased 50% in 2022- with an odd "but the CEO left so they're in trouble" assessment which seems a bit bonkers. Then the author seems to say that because fake meat hasn't *replaced* the real meat industry, that they have failed. Odd criteria, IMHO. I'm quite certain it could be assumed rather easily that such a thing would not happen, especially in a few years time. The fact it has stuck around this long makes it clearly *not* a fad. (Anecdotal, but noting this:) My nearby Walmart Neighboorhood Market has all sorts of plant-based meat products, and that section has only expanded over time, not the reverse. I have tried some frozen meals by Impossible and really enjoyed them, as well as some other assorted items from those sections. I do think that price is still an issue, but real meat maintains a much larger, more established market and supply chain so that is to be expected (unless fake meats are cheap to produce and we're being gouged). But overall I would lean towards them being more popular now than I've ever seen before- or at least all of my local grocery stores' choice to use up more space for these products seems to imply so.
  • nxmnxm99 4y ago
    The problem is you could have said the same in the 90s for veggie burgers. Existing and slowly expanding doesn't mean it hasn't been a flop - especially considering the monumental amount of capital & hype that was put behind plant based meat From that perspective, it's definitely been a flop (so far). Jury is still out on long-term lab grown meat.
    • namlem 4y ago
      There was a hype bubble yes, and from the perspective of the people who bought into the bubble, it has been a flop. But the industry has still undergone slow and steady growth and this trend will likely continue.
  • COGlory 4y ago
    The fundamental problem is that everyone has a different reason for wanting plant-based meat/fake meat. So by any particular metric, they have failed. Some people want fake meat to be a 1:1 meat substitute because they love meat but can't eat it (allergies, cardiovascular, etc). Some people want cheaper meat because quality meat you can trust has grown too expensive. Some people want more vegan/vegetarian options because they object to killing animals or economic externalities that cattle grazing causes. Some people want meat-based substitutes because the companies are public and they are looking for the next unicorn to invest in. The problem is, those looking for meat substitute think it isn't close enough, those who want cheaper meat think it's too expensive, vegans/vegetarians have actually vegetable based options and aren't necessarily looking for fake meat at all, and investors fell for hype. Every one of these entities has a different metric, and several of them are at odds with each other. In my opinion, if plant-based meat turns out to be a flop, it will be because its core market is too many different groups and it'll never satiate all of them. Case in point - read the comments on this article. Everyone has a different reason for wanting or not wanting this stuff.
• sam0x17 4y ago
  The biggest flop about it is it's higher carbs than normal meat. Steak and things like that typically have zero or near zero carbs per serving. This plant-based stuff is carby as hell, so keto people are going to avoid it, and basically everyone is keto right now in some capacity. If it was zero carb, people would put up with the taste and increased cost.
• uhtred 4y ago
  Not even going to read the article because I know this is bs. Every time I go to the grocery store there are more plant based meat alternative products to choose from than last time, and the best ones sell really fast. It's not even just in the US. In the UK recently I was elated to find so many vegan food choices in the supermarket. More than in America! And so good. Vegan Pukka Pies! Vegan Quorn ham slices that I wish we had in America! It's a great time to be a vegan!
• 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Most fertile soil is used for cattle. It has a large environmental impact. If we want to preserve trees and let the biosphere heal and conserve animal habitats, we need to stop the expansion of the meat industry, or even reduce it. Fake meat is comfort food not healthy food. Health-wise, it can be worse than meat. 3D printed meat sounds promising to me (real meat without the suffering).
• pibechorro 4y ago
  Good
• 0xfeeddeadbeef 4y ago
  "Innovative New Process Converts Plants Into Meat By Feeding Them To Cows" (The Babylon Bee)
• mbgerring 4y ago
  Durable plant-based meat brands have existed for decades. Beyond/Impossible certainly raised the bar, but when I was a vegetarian teenager in 2003-4, Tofurkey had already been a thing for a long time, and as far as I know still is. Impossible/Beyond had a “tech company” veneer, so a certain kind of business writer maybe expected more from them in terms of growth, but that was probably never a realistic way to judge these companies.
  • namlem 4y ago
    Yeah Boca and Morningstar Farms have been around for a while. And tbh are almost as good as Beyond while being way cheaper. Beyond is extremely overpriced for the quality younget. Impossible is expensive, but it's also much better quality.
• trashface 4y ago
  As a long time mostly vegetarian (still avoid red meat) I have long avoided all imitation "meat". The ingredients are generally utter garbage, if you are at all concerned about long term health you don't want to be eating that stuff. I don't know it its worse than meat but its probably close (trading heart disease for cancer or maybe increase risk of both).
• dboreham 4y ago
  A product that is everywhere, on the menu in seemingly every restaurant, is a flop?? Article paid for by the meat industry perhaps?
  • takoid 4y ago
    Where do you live? In the United States, I have yet to see plant-based meat on a menu.
    • alexgrover 4y ago
      Where in the United States? It’s very easy to find restaurants serving Beyond/Impossible in most major cities in the US.
    • astura 4y ago
      You don't live near a Burger King, Starbucks, Carl's Jr, or White Castle?
• ttul 4y ago
  I am vegetarian and I buy plant-based meat probably every day or two. If I was a meat eater, I would find it an unsavory replacement for the real thing, not to mention more costly. Perhaps that is the problem.
• Poppys 4y ago
  I think it was on the Off Menu podcast that the hosts summed it up perfectly, that plant-based meat is a great substitute for the dodgy low quality meat you would get at a kebab shop at 1am, but you aren't going to get a the quality of a nice steak. None of the plant based meat I have tasted has been great, but I'd scoff it down for a quick post pub snack.
• jdlyga 4y ago
  Anyone who's had Indian food can say that you don't need meat to have a delicious meal. European and American food uses vegetables mostly plain, so of course it's not going to be the same as meat. But try any veg curry and then tell me you'd rather have Beyond Meat.
  • slothtrop 4y ago
    Right, though the large meat-abstaining culture in India is vegetarian and not vegan. As far as I'm aware, there has not been a traditional vegan culture. It's been made viable owing to supplementation and tangential modern products.
• mdip 4y ago
  Strange choice of headline given the content, but I'm guessing they went link-bait-y to drive clicks. Nonetheless, I don't know that any of this is unexpected. They're doing about as well as I would have thought they would. Honestly, they have a tricky market in the first place: (a) Vegans that I know[0] don't want a product that makes them "think they're eating meat[1]" and (b) they haven't marketed sufficiently enough to "me". By "me", I mean, the guy who's only going to buy the meat-free burger if and only if I can't tell the difference between real/fake. I'm also unwilling to buy a fake "raw ground beef" product if I have to substantially change the way I cook it in order to use it. That gets you through the "I'll try it" gate -- and I ate an Impossible Whopper. I didn't side-by-side it, but I went in expecting I'd be able to tell the difference and really wanted to but I had to concede that it was exactly the "kind-of-shitty-but-you-still-crave-it" Whopper. And that says a lot -- it's a weird flavor and texture (which was slightly different, but it was either unimportant or slightly better). But then there's the second reason -- if it tastes the same, why am I not eating the regular Whopper? I am not in any way invested in "Animal Rights", I do not have a political or other bone to pick with the meat industry, I don't know enough about the effects of the meat industry, specifically, on climate change so as far as I can tell, this product needs to be one or more of the following: (a) a little (or a lot) cheaper than meat, (b) healthier than meat equivalent to the additional cost, (c) shelf-stable or has an otherwise much longer refrigerator/freezer life than meat. I found out at Burger King that "it's more expensive" and "tastes the same". I bought it because I read about the company and "I wanted to see if it tasted like a Whopper." On one hand, they nailed marketing it early on. There's no way I would have tried this. I was vegetarian and swore off all forms of plant-based ground beef after throwing up my share of Boca Burgers. Had I not read a bit about the science behind it and "the blood", I wouldn't have been curious enough. Having now satisfied that curiosity and having even had a good experience, I have never purchased another Impossible Whopper, nor have I even thought about purchasing another plant-based product. I suspect that they may be better for my heart, but they haven't told me[2]. I suspect it's quite a "process" to make and wonder how many ingredients "I can't pronounce and don't understand the origin of" that the product may have. These are the "gut-instinct" judgements that I made with no knowledge, not so much as picking the product up off of the shelf the hundreds of times I've passed it because they haven't given me a good enough reason to get past the price. Not everybody in this space is failing "me". I probably bought Morningstar Farm's "fake chicken patties" for my family every grocery trip for 10 years. The reason was easy: they were far more consistent and tasted better than processed chicken patties. I only stopped because my kids stopped enjoying chicken patties (buns were going bad too quickly). And despite the bumps in the road, I don't think any of the bigger brands are really failing ... they need to adjust their messaging a bit, maybe, if they want to extend their market. Or maybe this is the totality of the market for "plant-based meat" at this price point. [0] I don't know why this phrase is starting to sound like "I have (insert minority) friends" but ... I was (lacto/ovo) vegetarian for a year in my 20s (having nothing to do with animal rights); many friends were vegan. [1] This topic often came up when discussing Boca Burgers and other veggie burgers; universally they preferred mushroom/eggplant-based patties because they don't taste anything like meat. [2] OK, so this may be my fault. Maybe they're not reaching me or my family. I've found that living 15 years without Cable Television nor watching any broadcast at home (I stream everything and do not watch sports ... not even the Olympics), having Adblock everywhere and the like means my exposure to ads has resulted in major gaps (gasps of "you've never heard of X" ... and I'll say, the spray-dish-soap was something I wish I had in my life a few years ago, but all in all it's a big plus). But nobody talks about those aspects of the product, either.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• nozzlegear 4y ago
  When I first became vegetarian four or five years ago, the plant-based meat stuff helped me transition off of real meat more easily than I think I could've done without it. I grew up on the traditional meat-and-potatoes diet that a lot of rural midwestern people did in my area. My father raised and butchered cows through most of my childhood/teenage life, so having ground beef or steak every night was the norm. We always had a freezer full of meat ready to be cooked for a meal. Because of that I sadly didn't have much taste for most vegetables. Even after I decided to stop eating meat, I would've refused to eat something like a salad because I never developed a taste for most leafy greens. These days most of my meals do not include plant-based meat, but if I'm out at a restaurant or if I want fast food I'll grab an impossible burger or something like it. I just love that the option is available for me.
• smm11 4y ago
  Heroin is already a thing, and they had to make Oxy. Meat is already a thing.
• morog 4y ago
  There are far tastier and more natural veggie burgers and sausages made from beans, lentils, chickpeas, mushrooms, etc. The only catch for VCs is you don't need labs and millions of dollars to make them.
• armatav 4y ago
  It tastes terrible - so who’s really surprised? Anyone saying it tastes like meat is ignoring the rubber texture and dryness
  • wohfab 4y ago
    Then you didn't try a good one, yet. I can say the same about a steak that's cooked "wrong" or a "burger" where nobody ever knows what actually is in there because for all you know it can be hundreds of dead animals in a single burger patty. It tastes terrible, if you cannot cook. That is true for every single meal.
• Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]
• algoatecorn 4y ago
  Here's the thing. You might see a lot of these plant-based meat options in grocery stores and think "it's certainly not a flop! look at the grocery store sales!" But now take a look at the major industry players. JBS, Tyson, Danone, etc. The ones with more capital than you can imagine and every reason to consider plant-based product lines. Track their PR timeline over the past 5 years and it's easy to see that they tried to push this stuff into the market and it was not accepted in a way that generated profits. Yes, I know big-meat is subsidized and not pricing in externalities. But that is the world we live in. These are just honest observations of a bizarre market. If you are passionate about sustainable food systems, it's important to take a hard look at the truths surrounding meat production. Sexy tech and moral high-grounds only get you so far.
  • gman2093 4y ago
    >JBS, Tyson, Danone It is in the best interests of these companies to preserve the status quo of sub-par veggie burgers
• osrec 4y ago
  I had a "long vegetal" burger in Spain from Burger King. Basically an imitation chicken burger. And it was awesome! And Spanish people were ordering it too. In the UK, the meat free alternatives are pretty great too. Honestly, it feels like meat free stuff is turning out to be the opposite of a flop.
• taco_emoji 4y ago
  Right now you pay an extra $1 or more for the Impossible version of a burger, so there was a spike of curious people trying it once, and now it's leveled off to the much smaller number of people who are willing to pay the premium regularly. But getting the average consumer to switch requires competitive pricing. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone.
• fudgefactorfive 4y ago
  I feel the issue with the meat alternatives has been the idea that Vegetarians and Vegans are growing in number and most people don't prepare their own food. Couple that with some indications that in the western world both Vegans and Vegetarianisms seem to have more disposable income [0] and you get people with business backgrounds naturally pricing the products higher. Also from a social perspective in the west, people will pay a premium to appear to be making "healthier" or "ethical" purchases. 0: A study on self-reported eating habits with some interesting citations https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5622783/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5622783/
• mempko 4y ago
  Impossible burger meat is literally the only reason I am able to eat Burger King and Red Robin. It increased the customer base of those companies.
• lxi92 4y ago
  If you look at the other articles published by the author, Deena Shanker, they are pretty much all doom-and-gloom headlines related to plant-based companies: https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/ASznQGEjaUE/deena-shanker https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/ASznQGEjaUE/deena-shanker This does not look like someone objectively trying to sort through the facts and present a representative picture of the state of things. Just something to consider.
• nobodyandproud 4y ago
  My local grocery is constantly out of https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/morningstar-farms-chik-n-nuggets-product.html https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/mornin... They restock and it’s gone in a week or two. Contrast that beyond meat, impossible burger, and other pricey options which never budge.
  • gnicholas 4y ago
    I recently saw Beyond sausage on BOGO sale at Safeway. I’ve never bought it before, but between that discount and a general meat coupon (which interestingly applied to meat substitutes), it was a decent deal. Haven’t tried it yet but interested to see if it could be a worthwhile purchase at this lower price level.
    • DangitBobby 4y ago
      I quite like the sausage. Hope you enjoy it.
    • nobodyandproud 4y ago
      If you’re like me and want the slightly rubbery texture: Try microwaving a sausage before you using it (e.g., sausage roll).
• JeremyNT 4y ago
  Basically a dupe of the submission from the NYT [0] (2022) with different/more editorializing: [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33773135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33773135
• glonq 4y ago
  I would switch to plant-based meat if it scored at least 2/3 on... - healthier - cheaper - tastier I think it currently scores somewhere between 0 and 1 out of three.
• bwi4 4y ago
  I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but beyond taste/value arguments, there is an argument that the production of lab-grown meat is not able to reach significant scale with the available technology. > And yet, at a projected cost of $450 million, Good Food Institute (GFI)’s facility might not come any cheaper than a large conventional slaughterhouse. With hundreds of production bioreactors installed, the scope of high-grade equipment would be staggering. According to one estimate, the entire biopharmaceutical industry today boasts roughly 6,300 cubic meters in bioreactor volume. (1 cubic meter is equal to 1,000 liters.) The single, hypothetical facility described by GFI would require nearly a third of that, just to make a sliver of the nation’s meat. > If cultured protein is going to be even 10 percent of the world’s meat supply by 2030, we will need 4,000 factories like the one GFI envisions, according to an analysis by the trade publication Food Navigator. To meet that deadline, building at a rate of one mega-facility a day would be too slow. > By GFI’s own admission, the challenges are serious—current costs are 100 to 10,000 times higher than commodity meat, according to the CE Delft analysts. > There’s another issue: In focusing on micronutrients as the primary cost driver, GFI may have underestimated the cost and complexity of providing macronutrients at scale. Just like other living animals, cultured cells will need amino acids to thrive. In Humbird’s projection, the cost of aminos alone ends up adding about $8 per pound of meat produced—already much more than the average cost of a pound of ground beef. [0] https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/ https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...
• PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  How is anything plant-based considered meat? By its very nature, it is not meat. It is plant fiber. Words have meaning, and without meaning we have chaos. I think the problems with plant-based "meat" is the fantasy that it is "meat." It will never be meat, just like insects will never replace a steak, even if Bill Gates starts jumping up & down and demanding we eat it to save planet earth.
• vlod 4y ago
  Look just accept that all "meat" in the future will be vegan. i.e. "Taco Bell Is Vegan in the Future" Article:[0]) according to the movie 'Demolition Man'. :)_ [0] https://www.livekindly.com/taco-bell-is-vegan-demolition-man/ https://www.livekindly.com/taco-bell-is-vegan-demolition-man...
• hbossy 4y ago
  If you are going to sell margarine you can't make it more expensive than butter.
• helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/PoYvv https://archive.ph/PoYvv
• helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  I've been vegan for 35 years and the thought of eating a burger that tastes like meat turns my stomache. If you're a meat eater that wants to reduce consumption of animals then do that in the other (healthier) meals and have a decent animal burger once a week/fortnight. If you're eating burgers much more regularly then you're probably better off getting more variation into your diet and than eating highly processed vegetable patties that aren't as satisfying.
  • kuschku 4y ago
    I've been vegetarian for 12 years now. I used to dislike replacement products, but what Rügenwalder and Beyond produced in recent years is so good, I now eat some kind of meat replacement every week.
  • ryanisnan 4y ago
    I’m an omnivore who enjoys eating meat. I also really enjoy these plant-based alternatives. I think we should avoid the anecdotal fallacy here.
  • throw827474737 4y ago
    Hmm.. I'm a vegatarian, once vegan, since let me count.. oh why does that matter at all? Taste like meat? Not at all, likely, don't remember, but I usually find them taste just nice, pea protein with spices, so what's the problem? Also what does thst have to do with how regular? I hope they don't go out of business, being concerned for animals and environment I think every alternative that some people enjoy is great.
  • alvah 4y ago
    I don't think this line of "persuasion" is going to rally many to the cause.
  • gernb 4y ago
    There are millions of vegatarians that like meat like products. See the 100s of products made from things like wheat gluten that Buddhist monks have been eating for 1000s of years I don't know a source on the history of all of it but I've been to several restaurants in Asia that specialize in dishes that taste like they're made with meat but aren't this came up resently tho https://youtu.be/lrrmysxnTdA https://youtu.be/lrrmysxnTdA
• pleb_nz 4y ago
  I doubt it's the last we'll see of meat flavoured substitutes or meat grown in vat....
• gloryjulio 4y ago
  We already have cheap beans and tofu. Thanks
  • xvilka 4y ago
    It's also possible to make burgers out of buckwheat. It has an interesting and unique taste.
  • dgb23 4y ago
    It’s also pretty easy to make burger patties out of black beans. Tastes great, is simple and you can throw in things you like, such as onions and garlic. Pretty sure it’s nutritious as well.
    • Findecanor 4y ago
      I too make my own patties most of the time, instead of ready-mase fake meat. Just mash whatever beans/tofu I have. Maybe some dry falafel mix. Half an egg and some potato starch will help with keeping it together. A splash of soy sauce for colour. Just make sure that the mixture does not get too wet.
  • frankzander 4y ago
    Turns out to be true tbh. I've tasted all kinds of fake meat and sausages and some is pretty good. But at the end tofu (pulled is the best) and saitan (not satan) is the easiest and most versatile. You can do almost anything with it. Chickpeas, beans and bean-cheese (aka tofu) and except from spices and herbs nothing more is needed.
    • lm28469 4y ago
      Seitan* you can actually make it at home easily, same for tempeh, reducing the amount of unknown things you eat even more since you control every step of the process
  • etu 4y ago
    This is the way.
• Oxidation 4y ago
  The weird Silicon Valley aesthetic of it all is severely unattractive to me. I don't need a version number, a slick website, Twitter fanboys and angling for more VC funding in my diet.
  • Dalewyn 4y ago
    Does the version numbering at least make more sense than USB?
    • tomcam 4y ago
      Unfair comparison. The Voynich Manuscript makes more sense than USB versions.
• scantis 4y ago
  If any of the planet saving meat substitute promises are true, such a fake meat patty would cost a tenth of the beef equivalent and it would dominate the market. I read somewhere you would need 25 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of beef, ergo one could potentially produce 25 times the amount of substitute. Obviously that isn't true and such a patty is a specialized product of various highly processed plant matter. It is around 2-4 times the price of meat equivalent and to me it is no surprise, that people aren't willing to pay more for an inferior product. Now people say, well if we all had bought it, mass production would already reduced the price significantly. I don't think people are paying new cooking methods and food processing reactors here. There are more people involved, more complex ingredients, more processes, more shipping and more energy. That is why it is much more expensive.
  • viraptor 4y ago
    > one could potentially produce 25 times the amount of substitute 25 times of cattle feed, sure. But there's a lot of selection and mixing of various plants for taste. It's not a simple replacement.
  • maxerickson 4y ago
    Using modern farming practices it's about 7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Conversion_ratios_for_livestock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Conversi... (Disliking and thus moving away from those practices is a goal some people have, but they are the dominate method of meat production at the moment, so it's the reasonable comparison)
  • pard68 4y ago
    I raise cattle (one day for a living, but now a side job and for my enjoyment). Your read on the feed is very true for the feedlots, not trying to discredit that, because if you buy your beef from a feedlot than this is very much the case -- chances are if you don't know where you beef came from, then it came from a feed lot. If your packing says "Grass Fed" than it just means they spent most of their lives in a pasture before being shipped to a feedlot for a miserable last three months of life, so chances are you probably don't know where your cattle came from, even if you're going on the packaging in a grocery store, and it's actually grained to some extent. There are a few exceptions to this, even in stores. If you buy from Whole Food and get their brand beef, it's grass-only. I know the largest rancher selling to WF, we're friends -- my teeball team beat his teeball team in the season finals last summer. I mostly raise dairy cows, but if you're going to go through the effort to raise one sort of breed of cattle, it's trivial to add in an even lower maintenance cattle as well. As a result I have three or four animals in my pasture right now who are getting ready for freezer camp. My neighbors are all beef ranchers, I am the exception. But none of us are feeding grain to our cattle. My area sells a massive amount of grass-only beef. We have the luxury of this being basically free for us to do and then having found a niche market willing to accept a lot more money for their beef if it was raised right and fed right. I don't sell my beef the way most folks do, so unless you know me personally, you've never eaten my animals or had our farm's dairy products. All that to say, there are very good alternatives to feedlots. My beef cattle only need supplemental food (aka more than the green grass in my pastures) between December and April. I did the math, it costs me $140 / year to feed out cattle and it takes two or three years for an Angus to be butcher-weight. That's $420 on the high end for a grass-only steer that'll dress to like 600lbs of beef. I'd get by with even fewer days feeding except I also own and breed Appaloosas and horses are much harder on the pastures than cattle. If I ran two herds my cattle would keep the pastures in grass until about January -- and with this warm weather I know folks who have YET to feed hay! But with my horses mixed into the herd it means that the grass is killed if I keep them on it -- horses have top and bottom teeth, they can cut grass clear to the dirt but cattle only have bottom teeth and they'll leave about 1/2" of grass on each blade, meaning the grass can continue to regenerate all winter if it's wet and warm enough.
• monero-xmr 4y ago
  It doesn’t taste that good, it smells weird when cooked, it isn’t actually healthier, it’s typically more expensive than real meat as it’s “premium”, the nutritional value is suspect… the list goes on and on
  • wilg 4y ago
    Yep, for me it just tastes weird.
  • sokoloff 4y ago
    I think Impossible is fine as a casual ground beef substitute. It tastes okay (not amazing) in burgers and would be fine in any sauce. The problem is its price is eponymous: Impossible for consumers to, pun intended, stomach it. Sell it for 75% of 80/20 ground beef’s price and it will fly off the shelves. At 250-400%, nope.
    • joshjob42 4y ago
      True, but they say in the article that "Pricing, which has already come down, could match beef as early as the end of the year, [Impossible's CEO] says, as his costs continue to improve with increased efficiency.“ That suggests to me that certainly by sometime in '24 we ought to see Impossible Beef down to cost parity with 80/20 (so ~$5/lb or so) which I think would really start to drive a transition. I'd certainly not buy animal beef anymore I don't think, unless it was some crazy good stuff for a special occasion.
      • sokoloff 4y ago
        I can regularly buy 80/20 ground beef at $3/lb at the retail level (family pack, on sale) and I’m sure commercial food service is buying it cheaper than I’m buying it at retail. The transition acceleration happens closer to $2.50/lb than $5/lb, IMO. Even matching beef price would be significantly welcome progress though, as one of my kids eats vegetarian. It doesn’t taste “better” to most people, so the transition has to be driven by a non-taste metric. That leaves price or ethics, and I know which way I’m betting on the US consumer, especially in a high-inflation, likely recession environment.
• nprateem 4y ago
  I guess a lot of people who reduce meat do so for health reasons, eg to reduce cholesterol, increase vitamins, etc. Changing to a heavily processed veggie burger seems against that especially when they're so expensive.
  • i_dont_know_ 4y ago
    I think you're on to something here... the target audience of this product is the hardcore meat-eaters, hoping they'll just do a drop-in replacement. But I think the actual target should be the people who are meat-eaters considering quitting. Those people are more likely looking at health benefits, and would probably be willing to tolerate some small issues here and there if it was definitely healthier. It looks like they prioritized taste over health concerns, meaning those 'early adopters' rejected the product, so it never makes it to their core segment.
• joesb 4y ago
  What is this article's obsession with things being "processed" food? Is "processed" the new "chemical"? It's like the article trying to keep repeating the words "processed", "ultra-processed", "hyper-processed" as if it's some scary boogey man.
  • alvah 4y ago
    There are many millions of people who believe that, generally, the less processed, ie the closer to it's natural state any food item is, the better it is for you (or the less bad it is for you). Are you not aware of this?
    • gernb 4y ago
      and their are billions of people who like cooking and pounding vegatables into goo and then adding 10 to 30 spices to make yummy curries
      • blitzar 4y ago
        Which step do they throw some high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats and yellow #5 into their curries?
        • Nursie 4y ago
          Where's that in impossible mince?
  • helsinkiandrew 4y ago
    > ... as if it's some scary boogey man In a way processed food is a scary boogey man - whether animal or plant based, processed foods are bad at providing nutrients to our bodies and can be packed with excessive amounts of salt and other substances. https://www.lhsfna.org/the-many-health-risks-of-processed-foods/ https://www.lhsfna.org/the-many-health-risks-of-processed-fo...
    • 4y ago
• legitster 4y ago
  It's the cost. We are meat-eaters and have been trying lots of plant-based products. I was never sold as them being health products, but I liked the (presumed) environmental benefits. Plus, I could make a single meal for me and my Vegan friends. Plant-based meats were supposed to be cheaper. But it never happened. So now we've mostly moved back to normal meat products. (It doesn't help that my vegan friends never stopped thumbing their nose down at the products).
  • notacoward 4y ago
    That's an important part of the answer (if not the answer) and should have been highlighted in OP. We've had a bit of inflation lately. Food in particular has become more expensive. Maybe this doesn't affect the average HNer much, but it absolutely does affect a lot of others. At the margins, which is where markets are made, quite a lot of people who might have bought plant-based meats won't at these prices.
  • DangitBobby 4y ago
    Absolutely the cost. Very annoying to pay more than everyone else at BK, but at least I can eat at BK. Sorry about your friends.
  • jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Exactly. Most burger chains don't use high quality meat for their burgers. You go to McDonald's, Burger King, or whatever and you are getting a greasy grey slab of ground "meat" (let's not think to long about where that comes from) that is 1) very thin 2) a bit rubbery 3) not that tasty 4) has some filler content in addition to meat and fat. To cover that up, most burger chains use lots of sauce, salt, and spices. It's called fast food for a reason. You eat it and you walk away mildly disappointed with the whole experience. Not that hard to compete with with a vegan option of any kind. It will taste different, and probably better by any objective standard. But when the baseline is kind of bland and boring to begin with, the benchmark for good enough isn't that high. The beyond burger is actually fine for that segment. I've had a few. They are alright. But I don't crave a beyond burger any more than I do a big mac. It's just bland fast food to me. I'll munch it away if I'm hungry and there's nothing else but it's not particularly good or excellent. It's miles apart from a good quality premium burger that is made of ground meat from a good cut of meat. You grill it medium, medium rare. Grease dripping all over the place when you eat it, etc. Much harder to compete with that. Now that's something I enjoy eating once in a while. The problem is that things like the beyond burger are somewhat better than a cheap fast food burger but not really in the same league as a really premium burger. But they are priced like one. So that narrows down the audience to people that actually like meat but feel guilty about it and want to pay more to eat less of it. These people exist of course but it's a relatively small group of people. I just try to eat other things than meat to cut down on meat consumption. Works fine for me.
• Moldoteck 4y ago
  Maybe unpopular opinion, but for me, best plant based patties are those that do not try to replicate meat taste. I much prefer patties made from actual plants&vegetables/mushrooms/chickpeas/beans like potato, carrot, some spices and so on. They have like actual 'natural' flavor, almost like something homemade. Those that add a ton of additives often taste awful, even beyond/moving mountains...
  • watwut 4y ago
    I agree. I dont think this should be unpopular option. Most of actually vegetarian food I tried tasted fine. It did not tasted like meat, but I don't even understand why I should want it to taste like a meat. It tasted like its own thing and it was made from actual fresh vegetables plus cheese, nuts and what not. I like eating meat, when I want meat I eat that. I do not need vegetarian meat that tries to pretend to be meat.
  • Frost1x 4y ago
    I share the same opinion. With plant based meats you're trying to fit a round peg through a square hole. It just isn't meat and doesn't get close enough for me. I would much prefer a good well prepared and thought out vegetarian style dish full of flavor. Maybe it's possible with more time and effort to get close enough but it's not there for me. The issue in the West is that we have fairly limited time and experience in preparing good vegetable dishes. Most are traditionally quite bland and off putting (for me, at least). Don't get me wrong some are quite good but usually as sides and very rarely can I visit some random person or resturaunt and expect a decently prepared vegetable dish compared to a meat dish. In contrast, when I eat at Indian resturaunts, it's not uncommon that I prefer some vegetarian dishes over ithers. I don't even feel "cheated" like I often do with poorly made vegetarian dishes because the food is usually quite satisfying and flavorful.
  • harel 4y ago
    That! I do not want meat substitute for my burger. I want a veggie burger. One that has it's own taste profile. If I want a meat burger I'll have a meat burger. Sell me something else with a sane list of ingredients and I'm there.
  • 4y ago
• shapefrog 4y ago
  I dont understand the obsession with reproducing meat out of plants. There are many plant based meals that are excellent without pretending to be bacon or steak or burgers. There is not, and should not be an industry trying to making pasta-based lettuce or potato-based lemons.
  • ranguna 4y ago
    I love the taste of plant based meat, it's something that I was never able to emulate myself.
  • rgmerk 4y ago
    Because meat (particularly beef and lamb) is environmentally disastrous and ethically problematic, but a majority of people really like the taste and wouldn’t want to give it up. Hence the desire to make a product that tastes like meat but is less environmentally damaging and doesn’t have the same ethical concerns. You may not like the implications (as someone who really enjoys meat, I don’t) but the environmental arguments against red meat are pretty compelling.
  • Nursie 4y ago
    > I dont understand the obsession with reproducing meat out of plants. I don't understand why someone has to bring this up every. single. time. People like meat. Those same people may want to become vegetarian for ethical reasons. They still like meat though. Oh look, a product that can fit in that "I like meat" slot without killing animals. Sounds tasty. What else is there to understand?
    • shapefrog 4y ago
      > ethical reasons I like the consequence of murder; the texture, the taste, the blood, the everything ... but not the bit where something actually dies.
      • Nursie 4y ago
        Yup. Not sure it's that hard to understand.
• snet0 4y ago
  "Early iteration of new technology has not yet solved the problem it is aimed at solving, more news at 11".
• cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  Novelty food item still existing after a few years is a groundbreaking success, not a flop. The real mistake is treating food as a tech startup. People are understandably cautious about what they put in their bodies and also associate food with their cultural identity. Widespread acceptance would require patient cultivation of each segment of the market and tweaking product to suit different needs and sensibilities. Now that burger composition can be altered rather than being whatever comes out of the cow, diet burger that still tastes meaty / fatty would not be a bad start, that's where people will overlook preservatives so long as they get results. Next, consider if plant burgers can fulfil various religious restrictions when real meat would not. Create ads and mascots for different cultures. Then wait a decade and you might be getting somewhere.
• calltrak 4y ago
  [dead]
• theGnuMe 4y ago
  I prefer the impossible burger to a regular one. The sausage is pretty good too. But you have to season it well and cast iron cook it. Is it healthy? Probably not. It is juicy though.
• RileyJames 4y ago
  I recall when I was in the states budget king was doing an impossible whopper for the same price as a standard whopper. And the taste was pretty equivalent. Obviously a Burger King beef patty is not a premium product, so that’s not an impressive feat from a taste perspective. But as a replacement for mediocre quality beef, it seemed like a winner. I assumed at the time tho that the price was subsidised. And I’m not sure if Burger King still offers this. Another anecdote, a year or so back, in Australia, the meat alternatives were being heavily discounted in Cole’s (major supermarket), which I assumed was due to poor sales. At 50% off it was an easy buy. But when the cost is significantly higher than meat I’m less interested.
  • DangitBobby 4y ago
    In my neck of the woods, Impossible Whoppers were higher than regular Whoppers for as long as I've paid attention.
• rvieira 4y ago
  Trying to discuss diets is always controversial, and I hope I don't sound like I'm on a high horse. Everyone has different motivations for their diets. It could be health, ethics, taste preference, etc.. I try to be a "flexitarian", because personally I find it gives me a good balance between nutrition, environmental impact, taste and ethical animal treatment (I try to animals seldomly and eat every single bit of the animal, offal, intestines, ears, tails, feet, etc). I'm also probably in the minority that actually likes the taste of "fake meat". I have them every now and then, but I'm fully aware that it's not "healthy food" and it's expensive and I'm not sure about the enviromental impact. When I have it, it's mostly to fulfill req #4 (eating fewer animals).
• drumhead 4y ago
  Having tried it a number of times it's not really there yet. It clearly has an odd texture and tastes unpleasant. They may have jumped the gun a bit. I think vat grown meat is a better bet.
• dvh 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • truetraveller 4y ago
    Very poetically stated. Have my upvote.
  • imakeinternet 4y ago
    Im vegan. I eat "fake meat" products all the time. I get to enjoy everything I used to eat... without the meat. Personally, I really enjoy them.
  • Lio 4y ago
    Well much like a suspiciously cheap sausage, this opinion is clearly a load of old bollocks. We often choose to eat meat substitutes. We like the texture and the taste. Since the supermarkets in the UK are full of meat substitutes from the likes of Quorn, What The Cluck, etc. and have been for years, we can't be the only family of omnivores to enjoy it. Meat alternatives don't have to 100% replicate meat to be enjoyable, they just have to be tasty.
    • KaiserPro 4y ago
      > this opinion is clearly a load of old bollocks. aye, so I really like the fake kebab meat that's full of spice. I like it because unlike real kebab meat, its not going to give me TB, Scrapie or monstershits. slap it in a microwave, dump it in a pita bread, add hot sauce, done. 4 mins tops.
  • KaiserPro 4y ago
    Mcdonalds have a vegan burger. its a shittonne better than its veggie burger and pretty much indistinguishable from its cheese burger. The chicken burger is still superiors though. However I'm not threatened by food, so if people want to eat it, I'm not going to slighted, I don't have enough energy to project politics into food.
  • jeroenhd 4y ago
    I want to eat artificial meat. Meat is tasty and many great dishes require something meat-like. In my experience artificial meat has only replaced the bottom-of-the-barrel burgers/sausages/chicken slabs, though. The expensive brands have nearly nailed down the texture of semi-processed beef, but the taste relies too much on "add salt until tasty". That said, I've cooked myself some decent fast food with fake meat instead of cheap €1 burgers. The cheapest, shittiest meat is just a protein source drenched in fat, plants can easily substitute that. If you're going vegetarian, fake meat isn't the way to go. There are great dishes built around vegetables, mushrooms, and all other kinds of non-meat products that you can eat instead. You won't ever find an artificial steak that's any good, but you may find something even better if you try exploring other meals instead. I don't care what anyone else eats, as long as you let me know of your dietary restrictions if we're planning on eating together.
• jjallen 4y ago
  I love Impossible meat. Wish it was available in my EU country! Various brands of fake meat have been at Whole Foods for a long time now. Not sure things are failing. Also I wonder how much of this negative sentiment is macroeconomic and tech-related? The stock prices of many tech/bio companies have come down. Is that what caused this article?
• bowsamic 4y ago
  This is purely my own subjective experience, but there is just something off-putting about the more accurate forms of plant-based meat. I think it's because meat actually has some quite disgusting and off-putting qualities. Qualities that humans are only used to within the context of meat. For example, recently we had some pea-protein based burgers, and they had three bizarre qualities in their attempt to recreate the beef burger. First, they were quite red inside. Second, they had an almost acrid, rancid acidity to them which really did taste quite similar to beef. Finally, they had a very burger-like texture, even with pieces of simulated unwanted gristle. So, what we get is a meat-eating experience recontextualised into the realm of vegetables. And, as vegetables, these qualities are bizarre, alien, and unexpected. We don't expect an acrid kind of acidity from vegetables, we don't expect strange chewy textures or inconceivable red juice in the absence of beetroot. So with the accurate plant-based meats the only choice is to try and forget that you're not eating meat. Of course this doesn't happen to everyone, but it is true for me. Plant-based meat is fundamentally revolting in a way that actual meat is not, and that's kind of ironic, considering the infinitely more pleasant production of the former over the latter. For that reason I generally prefer meat replacements that don't try to be exactly like meat: fake chicken nuggets and fish fingers are generally good, soy mince is fine, etc. Those things are far cheaper too
• zecg 4y ago
  Speaking as a vegan, I'll gladly try this so long as it's done on a separate griddle, but I really do not want a copy of the taste of meat.
• virtualritz 4y ago
  In Germany this is simply not true. All supermarket chains, at least in the cities, now have a considerate selection of plant based meat and it sells like bread. Yes, it is sadly more expensive than real meat for now. Still -- vegan burger patties are regularly sold out.
  • Escapado 4y ago
    Can confirm, but would add that "more expensive" depends on the exact brand and what kind of meat you compare it to. Even the more expensive faux meat products are often cheaper or very comparable to their organic counterparts. But if you take for example the supermarket brand version of the products, they are often around 33% cheaper than products from gourmet garden oder beyond. Protip: Ikea sells frozen meat ball alternatives. They are SO good and pretty cheap.
  • shakesbeard 4y ago
    Same in Switzerland. The selection has grown considerably over the last years.
    • DangitBobby 4y ago
      Same in the US. It's never been easier to be veg.
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Is this a regional thing? With the amount of vegan stuff I see advertised I'd assume the meat replacement industry has grown remarkably. Is this talking about specific VC backed brands, or specific subproducts? > Impossible has spun up new products such as animal-shaped faux chicken nuggets and blitzed supermarkets, leading to more than 50% retail sales growth in the US in 2022. The article seems to be mostly talking about Beyond Meat not living up to their "we'll replace the meat industry overnight" pitch. But the wider market seems to be doing fine.
• petesergeant 4y ago
  My wife is vegan, so we eat a lot of vegan food at home. One of the treats of being in the UK is the huge variety of vegan products at the supermarket. Fake bacon, fake chicken, fake cheese, UK supermarkets seem to have an endless variety. None of these items are made by Beyond or Impossible, though.
  • Hard_Space 4y ago
    Yup - I go back to my native London from eastern Europe once a year, and it's frustrating not to have access to an oven or hob, when I am suddenly surrounded by so much vegan choice (compared to Bucharest, which is still way better than the rest of Romania in this regard).
• Hard_Space 4y ago
  I've been vegetarian (99% vegan food intake) for five years, and the main reason I regularly buy so few of these products is that most of them are absurdly expensive, and most of the ones that aren't are not very nice to eat. Also turned off by gimmicks clearly not aimed at me, such as 'beetroot blood', and other nonsense. I don't know whether the economy-of-scale issues are what make these products so expensive, or whether the manufacturers were rubbing their hands together at a possible inroad into a wealthy 'hipster' market, and priced their wares accordingly. I do know that the prices have to come down before I will even start experimenting with some of these offerings. Right now I have zero motivation to 'treat myself' by trying an overpriced vegan burger that is too expensive to become a regular purchase.
  • flumpcakes 4y ago
    I eat meat, and am also turned off by these products. They are a facsimile that just doesn't sit well. However, I would eat this if it was blended/bulked out a real meat product. Like a burger that was 50% "real" beef and 50% "fake" beef. I think this has the big opportunity as a filler to reduce the amount of meat eaten as a whole. I don't understand who the current consumer target is supposed to be, if not meat eaters who should eat less meat (for any reason; health/environment/economoy/etc.)
• flumpcakes 4y ago
  This article seems a little self contradictory and also goes against my own anecdotal experience. In the UK I am seeing more faux-meat products than ever. And at least half of the adverts I've seen in the last few months for meat products (fast food burgers, frozen foods, etc.) have been for "fake meat". It seems as popular as ever. I know people that will now buy mostly a fake meat based meal, where as before they would have eaten the vegetarian option (for example the vegetable patties that were available before the fake meat choices).
• cabirum 4y ago
  Stop calling it "meat", please. It's not. Meat grows on animal skeletons. Use terms like "reprocessed plant sludge", soysage, or shitpatty.
  • ragazzina 4y ago
    Do you feel the same about almond milk?
    • cabirum 4y ago
      Yes and no. You see, almond milk does not aggressively attempt to take over "normal" milk, they coexist peacefully, and the distinction is obvious. The fake unmeat thing tries to look like meat, appears everywhere I expect my normal meat to be, and annoying like a popup with a broken [x] close button.