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If we can replace the taste, appearance, and texture of a medium-rare rib eye with lab grown meat at a substantially cheaper price, we will.
by SoftTalker 1mo ago
If we can replace the taste, appearance, and texture of a medium-rare rib eye with lab grown meat at a substantially cheaper price, we will.
- wonderwonder 1mo agoAgree, as long as it's meat. Lab grown meat from cells is meat. The reason impossible never worked was becuase it wasn't meat. Very few people are going to trade meat for soy and vegetables
- fooker 1mo agoYeah impossible was targeting a weird small niche. The intersection of 'vegan by all means', 'loves the taste of meat', 'does not care about ultra processed food', 'enough money to go for the expensive option'. No wonder it did not work.
- moate 1mo agoIDK what "never worked" means here, the market cap for Impossible/Beyond alone is still over a billion dollars. You can still get an Impossible Whopper at any Burger King in the US. There's plenty of issues with selling meat alternatives, I don't think you're the person to speak to them for some reason...
- bluefirebrand 1mo agoAccording to Google AI "The global beef industry has a total market value of approximately $465 billion to $526 billion" Impossible/Beyond barely exists in comparison
- aziaziazi 1mo agoThat’s a weird comparaison between one or two brand and "an industry". Let’s compare two ranch’s with… the global legumes industry !
- bluefirebrand 1mo agoOn the topic of replacing meat with fake meat, yeah it kind of does invite comparison, because they are essentially entirely competing industries at that point
- msm_ 1mo agoThat was not the issue pointed by GP. They noted that the comparison was between two companies, a whole industry. >That’s a weird comparaison between one or two brand and "an industry". In other words, Impossible and Beyond are not the only companies in meat replacement space. They are probably the largest, but comparing them to the whole industry makes no sense.
- fooker 1mo agoYou're off by ~40%. Their combined market cap seems to be around 600M.
- moate 1mo agoSorry to necro-post this, but, you're wrong. Hit me up with some citations please, mine are below. https://notice.co/c/impossiblefoods https://notice.co/c/impossiblefoods https://robinhood.com/us/en/stocks/BYND/ https://robinhood.com/us/en/stocks/BYND/
- nkrisc 1mo agoEven though I do eat meat I still enjoy black bean burger patties far more than Impossible because a black bean patty is tasty in its own way and not trying to replicate meat. A black bean patty or similar is a tasty bit of food that works well in a burger form. I like meat but not every meal I eat needs to have meat in it. Give me tasty (and cheaper) alternatives to meat and I’ll eat them in place of meat sometimes.
- aziaziazi 1mo agoWhere do you find those patties ? If you haven’t, recommend you to try tempeh as well, works very well in burgers but in everything else as well. Quite easy to find in big cities where I live but HN crowd often talk about those beans patties and I don’t see them in shops.
- nkrisc 1mo agoTruthfully, it’s very hard to find them these days, in my experience. Around 2005-2015 they seemed to be everywhere and were tasty options on their own merits. Every once in a while I’ll still find them in the grocery store but it’s hard. These days all I can find in groceries stores is various “plant protein” meat-wannabes. I do make tempeh from time to time, but the flavor just isn’t quite right for me. It’s good, but not my preferred option. Fortunately a black bean burger is not hard to make at home.
- eudamoniac 1mo agoYep. I mostly eat meat for the benefits to my athletic training. Plant-based protein is just inferior. I am also constantly aware that my eating meat is unethical, but prioritize my training over ethics at the moment. I would switch to decent tasting lab meat even at fairly high prices.
- moate 1mo agoThere are so many examples of pro-athletes* (not just, some dude "training") who are plant based. Define "inferior" I guess? If the goal is "ingest as much usable protein as your body needs" plants can do it at levels beyond whatever you're going for. Is this a cost value analysis situation? Is it about taste/texture/enjoyment? *Lazy source: https://www.greatveganathletes.com/ https://www.greatveganathletes.com/
- TomJansen 1mo ago>substantially cheaper price why substantially cheaper? Break-even would be fine too, no? And as a plus, lab-grown meat is much more ethical. I also think that replacing 'cheap' meat like ground beef would already be sufficient and would make a huge impact, there is really no need make it difficult for ourselves and try to replace rib-eye.
- wonderwonder 1mo agoI don't think most people are going to grab lab grown out of the grocer fridge if normal beef is available for the same price. I know I would not. But if its 25% cheaper I'm happy to try it
- loloquwowndueo 1mo agoI would for the same price as it doesn’t involve killing a cow. That’s a plus for me!
- fooker 1mo agoFor me, it would have to be mass produced and about an order of magnitude cheaper. I'd rather not be testing/tasting experimental lab stuff. And mass production bringing down the price with economies of scale is the real proof that the technology is ready.
- willsmith72 1mo agothere's nothing holy about eating real animals (unless you're religious) i'm no vegan, but if identical lab-grown alternatives are available at near same cost without the hormones, antibiotics, emissions, I'll take it
- fooker 1mo agoIdentical is the point here. The test of 'identical' to me is going to be mass production with economies of scale. I surely don't have the equipment to test whether it's identical, nor would I trust the marketing.
- hedora 1mo agoModern beef is unhealthy for humans due to grazing conditions. Maybe the lab grown stuff will be closer to conventional farming output.
- defrost 1mo ago> Modern beef is By which you mean US style grain finished short cycle beef I guess? The world's bigger than that.
- hedora 1mo agoI was using modern in a semi-disparaging sense, where ideas from intellectual movements such as brutalism (a branch of modernism) have been incorrectly applied to agriculture. Look how big the industrial cow (bovoid according to international labeling standards) has become. Bow before it until your heart explodes! By that definition, places like Europe and New Zealand don't produce modern beef. I really miss the days of $2/lb grass-fed New Zealand ground beef.
- jonstewart 1mo agoHopefully most people here getting ribeyes aren’t getting them from the same factory farms that supply McDonald’s and sell other cheap kinds of beef. A ribeye is an occasional luxury and best bought from the farmer.
- bookofjoe 1mo ago>... best bought from the farmer. Perhaps you're anticipating this: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/4/trump-allows-ranchers-process-beef/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/4/trump-allows...
- Loughla 1mo agoThis just opens up the door for meat that isn't inspected before sale. That's not ideal, really. There are farmers everywhere who will sell you a cow. There are small butcher shops that will process it. This is a solution in search of a problem, in my opinion. It will only benefit already massive corporation farms.
- 0xcde4c3db 1mo agoTrue, but it's also the case that in some places and subcultures we're already at a point where meat with certain qualifications in some contexts is a Veblen good, and the rhetoric around it is very much a quasi-mystical blend of notions of purity and vitalism (see e.g. paleo/primal/ancestral diet influencers). That edge, almost by definition, can't be produced in a lab, and if we were really being purely rational/utilitarian about these things, I doubt we'd be eating as much meat as we are today.
- kstrauser 1mo agoI love a good cheeseburger. I’ve enjoyed ones from Michelin restaurants and from local holes in the wall; I’m not choosy. To me, the taste and texture of a cheeseburger is one of the best testing things on the planet. I do not eat cheeseburgers to feel manly or dominant. I eat them because they are delicious. If I could have a plant-based or otherwise non-meat burger that tastes as good as the real thing, I’d eat it. Impossible burgers are getting close and I’ve had my fair share of them, but they’re not there yet. They’re near enough that I’m confident we’ll get there soon.