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The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that. I rather see more and more friends and people avoid eating mea

• JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  Beyond Meat is industrial plant-based protein. The wealthy and upper middle class can afford real plants. That means their market is is poor and lower middle-class folks—hence the distribution through fast food and mid-grade grocery channels. They’re not buying plant-based proteins. (The conscientious are already eating plants.) Beyond Meat is broken as a mass-market brand. It should be restructured as a niche play. > young folks already grow up with a very critical attitude towards meat consumption Statistically insignificant [1]. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919220301354 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030691922...
  • fn-mote 1y ago
    > The wealthy and upper middle class can afford real plants. I don’t understand this take on what (is / should be) a premium brand. The whole dismissal doesn’t make sense to me. It’s marketed at well-off former meat eaters. The poor will live on rice and tofu or pinto beans just like they have for the last hundred plus years.
    • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > don’t understand this take on what (is / should be) a premium brand It’s not. The premium options for plant-based foods are vast, fresh and more expensive than BM. Beyond Meat isn’t serving premium. It’s premium to the lowest-grade ground beef. But that’s like saying a basic economy seat is premium to Greyhound. Technically true. But misleading relativism. > The poor will live on rice and tofu or pinto beans Globally? Sure. In developed countries, of course not.
      • camtarn 1y ago
        The market must be very different in the US. In the UK, Beyond Meat is the most expensive meat free option in my local supermarket, other than one type of fake steak. There are some other premium brands at slightly lower prices, then cheaper brands, and finally supermarket own brands.
        • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
          > Beyond Meat is the most expensive meat free option in my local supermarket I think that’s true here too. The point is it’s less expensive than both high-quality meat and very fresh vegetables bred and grown for taste versus weight.
      • zahlman 1y ago
        > Globally? Sure. In developed countries, of course not. Not even the poor immigrants from countries with those food cultures? Really?
  • zahlman 1y ago
    > The wealthy and upper middle class can afford real plants. I have never understood the implicit premise here. I can get a 4 lb. bag of split yellow peas for $6 CAD locally without even trying to look for a sale; most of my supply has been purchased at about $4. By weight, it's on par with raw ground beef for protein content, and 4 lb. of that would cost several times as much.
    • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > I can get a 4 lb. bag of split yellow peas for $6 CAD locally without even trying to look for a sale Not as tasty as meat or garden-fresh vegetables.
      • zahlman 1y ago
        Says you. My split pea soup is awesome.
• kaliqt 1y ago
  It is sustainable.
  • go_elmo 1y ago
    Your word, plausible
  • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    It is. Just not at the rate we consume it.
    • bluescrn 1y ago
      Everything comes down to world population, which has quadrupled in a century, making the previously-sustainable now unsustainable. But even many of the climate catastrophists can't get away from the mentality of 'we still need growth at any cost'. And 'growth' is most easily obtained by creating more consumers and more workers.
      • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Everything comes down to world population This is nonsense. The consumptive, energy and material intensity of GDP, as well as GDP/capita, have varied greatly across time and countries. > even many of the climate catastrophists can't get away from the mentality of 'we still need growth at any cost' Degrowth is an extremist dead end. If an environmental movement falls for it, it should be ignored.
        • tsimionescu 1y ago
          Degrowth is inevitable. Whether it will happen "naturally" because of climate catastrophes and war, or whether we will somehow understand this and do something before it's too late, I can 100% assure you that the world economy in 2100 will be smaller than today.
          • ben_w 1y ago
• deleted 1y ago
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• Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  > Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that. Neither do I, but it's a highly competitive market that competes with both the established industrial meat market, as well as people actually educating themselves on cooking without "meat". I've always seen people buying "meat replacements" as kind of lazy, let's just swap one thing out for another, instead of find / cook something different entirely. I see it as a kind of middle-class virtue signaling, which wasn't helped by the fact the meat replacements are (or used to be, I haven't checked) more expensive than meat. Even though on paper they should be cheaper because growing vegetables should be a lot less resource intensive and more sustainable than the meat equivalent.
  • grues-dinner 1y ago
    Soy and oat milk is also incredibly expensive compared to cow for what it is. Same for most supermarket tofu in the West. The cheapest own-brand tofu in Tesco is the same as the beef mince (£6.50/kg). And even though I like tofu, it's 90% water and that's a terrible deal. A 500g pack of tofu doesn't go nearly as far as 500g of beef mince. Meanwhile you can buy it in a UK Chinese supermarket for under £3.50 per kg.
    • chronogram 1y ago
      In the Netherlands it's dirt cheap in all supermarkets. 550g package, so 500g of tofu is €3.72/kg, soy milk is €0.80/l.
    • deleted 1y ago
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    • aziaziazi 1y ago
      Perhaps there isn’t much demand in your Tesco. Store brand (organic) soy milk is 0.9€ here in Paris which is cheaper than the organic cow alternative - which is subsidized btw. 6.5£ for seems super cheap for beef and I’m sure tofu can be even cheaper when optimized. I find it here at the same price but it’s organic and grown in France. I wish it become more popular where you live so the prices become more competitive.
  • 1y ago
• aydyn 1y ago
  Beyond meat burgers taste like flavored plastic grounds, so until these plant based alternatives can close the taste gap its not going to go anywhere. And they have had years to make it taste better, so I suspect theres something fundamental that makes it very difficult. It is just too much to ask the public to buy worse tasting food at a higher price, all to feel morally better about yourself.
  • touwer 1y ago
    That says a lot about the public
    • nly 1y ago
      Food is one of the joys in life that people can enjoy no matter where they are on the socioeconomic spectrum. In the modern age, if you're poor, or just time poor, you can enjoy a tasty meal thanks to cheap food coming out of the modern food industry. Why would you pay more for a less enjoyable experience when tasty food might be one of the only joys in an otherwise mundane or hard-up existence? This is exactly why McDonalds is popular. It tastes relatively good, it's comforting, and it's cheap.
      • aziaziazi 1y ago
        Agree. As a side note McDonalds veggie nuggets are from behind meat and they rank equally to the chickens one one the taste and processing scales.
        • rkomorn 1y ago
          The regular nuggets are from behind meat. The veggie ones are from Beyond Meat. (Yes, this is a "nuggets are made from butt meat" joke on a typo.)
        • r053bud 1y ago
          > they rank equally to the chickens one one the taste and processing scales. What does that even mean?
• buran77 1y ago
  > The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don't see this message in there. If you ask me the real message is that companies trying to sell overly processed, way too expensive, imitations of "something" will struggle. They're trying to sell a very expensive mechanical horse. Just give people a car. Maybe it's a US thing where people are more emotionally attached to the concept of the burger. But I think these companies would be better off selling plant based stuff that doesn't need to be processed to the moon and back with the associated costs, just to imitate the real thing, and still fall short. Plant based food has been around for millennia, focus on that. More people would eat plant based food if it was more accessible in terms of price and effort to prepare. Imitating a meat burger wastes resources and results in something most meat eaters won't actually find as a good alternative, beyond the novelty factor.
  • mirsadm 1y ago
    Often I think it's largely based on the types of food people grew up with. Meat and potato diets seem to struggle with reducing the meat part of their diet. People often try to eat the same stuff but substitute meat with bad imitations of meat. In other places, as an example, Indian food has plenty of choices without meat and is delicious.
  • throw14082020 1y ago
    Maybe they went with burgers because it's low effort: everything else is the same (bun, salad, fries). Just replace the patty, which still goes through the same process. Again, missing the opportunity that vegetarian/vegan food can be healthier, not just removing of animal cruelty and death.
  • IAmGraydon 1y ago
    >They're trying to sell a very expensive mechanical horse. Just give people a car. I love this analogy.
• _9ptr 1y ago
  Well, that is probably just some kind of perception bias. Of course vegans or vegetarians have more vegan or vegetarian friends. If it helps you, I know hardly anyone who eats plant base meat.
• NoboruWataya 1y ago
  As a meat eater trying to casually reduce my meat consumption, I find myself buying more tofu, lentils and beans, rather than processed meat-like substitutes. I think that is the issue. People who want to eat meat will just eat actual meat, and people who don't want to eat meat will not feel compelled to eat a meat lookalike.
  • Trasmatta 1y ago
    > People who want to eat meat will just eat actual meat, and people who don't want to eat meat will not feel compelled to eat a meat lookalike. This is an extremely strong generalization that is obviously not true in many cases.
    • lambdaone 1y ago
      It doesn't have to be true of everyone to be an entirely plausible hypothesis for why highly-processed mock-meat alternatives are struggling.
• encom 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • explodes 1y ago
    Seems to be a lot more forcing happening around your parts than mine.
  • lannisterstark 1y ago
    Your experience is not universal and just because you haven't seen anybody do it doesn't mean that people haven't. If anything it is your take that is reddit tier. Nobody forces you to buy that stuff, people who want to eat that stuff do. Have you tried being any less entitled?
    • philwelch 1y ago
      Considering that this manufacturer of ersatz meat is unprofitable and bordering on insolvent, it seems that people do not, empirically, want to eat it.
      • lannisterstark 1y ago
        >people do not, empirically Words and phrases have meaning. That's not what empirical evidence means. Because there's only single manufacturer of plant based products, right? and it's not as if meat isn't heavily subsidized by the government otherwise. Pfft. And you know why plant based milk is shelved next to milk? SO PEOPLE CAN FIND IT. People don't want to go to another specialized aisle just to find products.
  • Marsymars 1y ago
    I live somewhere not especially urban/progressive, and I’ve never even heard of this “forced veganism meme” that you reference.
    • encom 1y ago
      Stores are filled with it. Nobody is buying it. Ergo it's forced.
• lambdaone 1y ago
  Delicious vegetarian food is already a thing, and doesn't require new technology, and it's not necessary to completely eliminate meat-eating to significantly reduce your ethical-harm footprint. It's a matter of changing food culture. Once you adapt to an omnivore diet that contains tasty meals from both meat and non-meat cuisine, it's actually quite easy to reduce your meat intake further.
  • jebarker 1y ago
    I was raised as a meat eater and ate it for 30 years. I’ve been vegetarian for about a decade for ethical reasons that I do believe are incompatible with eating any meat. I consider myself a good cook and make vegetarian/vegan meals for my family every night. However: I will never stop thinking that the taste of chicken, pork, beef and lamb are desirable. The conditioning is too strong. Sticking with vegetarianism is still an act of willpower for me. This is why I like meat alternatives.
• rebeccaskinner 1y ago
  The biggest issue to me is that beyond and impossible aren’t just making replacements that are worse than meat, they are making things that are worse than the alternatives we already had. A beyond burger might be more like meat than a patty made from beans or lentils, but it tastes worse and has a worse nutritional profile. Beyond chicken isn’t even all that similar to chicken and it’s a worse substitute than seitan for something like wings.
  • hombre_fatal 1y ago
    Actually, we'd expect better health outcomes on a plant-based meat patty than real meat: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32780794/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32780794/ Or you could take the position that it's at least noninferior. But you'd have to show the work for how you got to the idea that it's inferior.
• 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
  I think it’s largely a cultural problem though. Good tasting alternatives to meat and vegetarian dishes have existed in other cultures for a long time. But Western cultures, you immediately try and find a facsimile that needs a start up to produce rather than just cook something else. Same thing with coffee. Just drink black coffee? Nope, let’s work out how to convert nut juice into something that froths using emulsifiers!
• brookst 1y ago
  I think the article is more about one company that over-expanded and now has massive debt and no chance of repaying it.
• pdpi 1y ago
  More like "hyper-processed plant-based faux-meat may not succeed". Beyond Meat's problem is that they're catering to a tiny, highly-specific niche: people not willing to eat meat but are willing to pay through the nose for hyper-processed fake meat. So their audience is: 1. Vegan or vegetarian 2. Fairly well-off 3. Willing to consume highly-processed foods. 4. Craving a beef burger This is all sorts of problematic as a combination. First off, people who have stopped eating red meat (even if they haven't gone vegetarian) tend to really not enjoy the smell of beef, so their craving for a beef burger is under question from the get-go. Second, many vegetarians/vegans made that choice for health reasons (rather than ethical reasons), so "highly processed foods" are a no-go. Once you've cut out those two groups, you only get to keep the wealthier people of the leftovers. Honestly, as a meat eater who loves vegetarian food, I just don't understand the appeal of fake meat like this. Give me a chana masala or a dal dish instead, any day of the week.
  • seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    There are lots of high end vegetarian restaurants in Beijing that focus on fake meat. Pure Lotus is a famous one, that goes over the top on everything. I don’t really get the appeal, I would rather have more vegetarian-honest dishes at a veg place (I’m not a vegetarian)
  • carstenhag 1y ago
    And worse: really expensive compared to other brands or store brands. This is my issue with Beyond.
• zahlman 1y ago
  > Many buy plant based alternatives to milk as well. Twenty years ago only a few people would ask for oat/soy milk when ordering a coffee. But these days many do. There was a period of my life when I went dairy-free as part of investigating some health issues. At first I bought almond milk. It was clearly not an adequate replacement, and rather expensive, so I quickly ended up just dropping it entirely. I can't imagine a point to using these alternatives in coffee (or tea) — I'd sooner use an artificial whitener, or again just go without (although still with plenty of sugar, knowing me).
  • boston_clone 1y ago
    Making almond milk is as easy as blending a handful of almonds with a gallon of water, then straining.