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Producing alternative proteins for vegans is not as easy as you think
Producing alternative proteins for vegans is not as easy as you think. The world is facing a crisis in food production and alternative sources of protein can be part of the solution, but the fledgling Australian sector is struggling.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on Dec 06, 2025 at 11:58 AM
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I didn't get the impression from reading the article that feeding vegans is the primary driving factor in commercial development of non-meat edible proteins. Interesting read, thank you.
posted by wicked_sassy at 1:27 PM
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On a somewhat related note I'm still shocked at how fast Beyond Meat saw their fortunes turn. Their share price ranged between $100 and $200 between 2019 and 2021 only to crash to about $1 today due to lack of demand for its vegan meat substitutes.
I never bought their shares being in a different country but I thought they had a convincing pitch - that they could rapidly iterate and improve the taste and lower the cost.
posted by xdvesper at 5:53 PM
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For those, like me, who read the post title and thought "no, pretty sure growing beans and legumes is exactly as easy as I think it is": by "alternative proteins" they appear to mean highly processed meat substitutes that try to look and taste like meat.
posted by eviemath at 8:35 PM
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it's literally as simple as planting beans (and i saw eviemath reply)
if lab food can't compete i have some crocodile tears
posted by okayturnip at 8:47 PM
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Beans are great but many people acculturated to meat consumption will not go vegan unless they have access to meat analogues.
Retail is also a hyper competitive and hostile place for small market alternative products. Until recently the small vegan meat section at my local supermarket was positioned right in the center of the animal meat aisles. Which was certainly... a choice.
This section was frequently under stocked and conspicuously in permanent disarray when compared to the well presented aisles of animal meat.
I don't think these products are getting a fair suck of the sav.
posted by neonamber at 9:42 PM
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"Hello Carol, we're John Cena"
posted by CynicalKnight at 12:14 AM
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I suspect part of the issue with lack of popularity of Beyond Meat et al is that in the US these products are often more expensive than their meat analogues. I haven't done a deep dive but I'm
told there are subsidies for meat production that help lower supermarket prices for things like ground beef and these products don't get that.
posted by needs more cowbell at 3:50 AM
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neonamber: "Until recently the small vegan meat section at my local supermarket was positioned right in the center of the animal meat aisles. Which was certainly... a choice.
This section was frequently under stocked and conspicuously in permanent disarray when compared to the well presented aisles of animal meat."
Yes, this happens at one of my neighborhood grocery stores, too (a pretty decent Giant -- local supermarket chain). Thankfully we also recently got a Wegmans, which has a lot more vegan everything, is consistently stocked, and gives vegan meats and cheeses their own section.
posted by wicked_sassy at 5:21 AM
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Yeah I don't think vegans are driving the crisis caused by unsustainable meat production.
The fake-meat folks have generally said they're marketing to meat eaters as an occasional substitute.
posted by lapis at 6:26 AM
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So back at 340ppm, when I was 6, my mum came home from Sainsbury's having picked up a few leaflets about new foodstuffs, which was a pretty important part of how people learned about food in those days when only 1 TV channel showed adverts.
The particular foodstuff that was launched? One based on precision fermentation of glucose syrup and ammonia to make a high protein balanced meat substitute. Did it work? Well, I got 10 grams of protein from a couple of 'ham' slices made of it yesterday, so, kind of.
I don't know where the hold-up is coming from*, but it's the future that we need to be in, and we aren't.
*I do have some very convincing leads, but I'm not going to be drawn on them here, because I'm assuming that would be a distraction.
posted by ambrosen at 6:50 AM
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And why do we think of dietary protein as some sort of scarce resource that people are in danger of suffering a deficiency?
Racism. Racism and colonialism.
A reasonably balanced vegan diet kind of on its own gets like four times the US RDA of dietary protein. Weird 19th century German notions of meat and masculinity aside, you're fine without seeking out some special source of the stuff. This is basically propped up by rancher propaganda, straight out of the 1970s.
For those of you who are about to complain that I linked to podcasts rather than 7000 page walls of text, relax: there are transcripts on each page.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:47 PM
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Meat is high status food. My ex- used to get whiny if we had chicken too often, beef was preferred.
Protein has become status food, too. It seems pointless to me. I get plenty of protein, I do eat meat, fish, beans, nuts, grains and I don't worry about it. I know someone who ate lots of protein while pregnant, kids are hyperallergic.
I am squicked out by manufactured meat, fake cheese, and so on. I minimize dairy and miss delicious cheese in its many varieties, but if I just avoid it long enough I get by. Then I eat a slice of fresh hot, melty pizza and it's my downfall. Or a grilled Swiss cheese sandwich, or a proper Reuben. But my tofu Pad Thai this evening was really good.
posted by theora55 at 4:12 PM
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I'm an omnivore who hangs out (and travels) with a lot of vegans and consumes vegan food on purpose, and I feel like the biggest "sell" of fake meat/alt-proteins - based on feedback from vegan friends and trying to find places to eat with vegan friends - should actually be for convenience foods and easy foods and restaurant foods, not necessarily the home cook market as a primary target.
Even my friends who wouldn't bother with it at home have been - in the past few years - SO RELIEVED to just be able to get a substantial breakfast sandwich or burger or whatever at the airport or on the road or just daring to leave the house for a moment. Like, yes, beans are great but IS that what you want on your Subway? Seems like a severe shirt risk. Wouldn't it be NICE if we could go to a place where you can get the Chick'n Parm, or get the Animal Lovers pizza with stuff that has the right flavor and smells that come from the seasoning in sausage and pepperoni and bacon and at least look appealing and not like TVP (but I would certainly settle for TVP Bits if they'd get the seasoning right)? What if there were cones of Soy Curl Substance that can roto-cook and be sliced like gyro meat/al pastor? Again: a pita full of beans, loose or mashed, is maybe not a textural sensation or especially secure as a walking food. (Though now I'm craving a bean burrito...)
It just can be really hard to meet a reasonable satiety at a reasonable price point with reasonable convenience - which is not a sin, we deserve a world in which people can choose not to home-cook on any given day or in any given life circumstance - as a vegan out in the world. Especially if you are NOT a carbitarian, or if you're going to scream if you have to eat one more salad. Some days, you just want a strip or nugget of Substance A that you can dip into Substance B. Some days you want a burger that doesn't feel like it's got either nothing or a slice of fried burlap in the middle.
Even just, like, to be able to get a can of Italian Wedding soup with vegan meatballs. Stouffer's party-size lasagna in either a vegan or vegetarian version that still packs the density of meat sauce? Shelf stable canned and pouch retort-processed meals do actually make a difference in people's lives when kitchen or fridge access is limited, but only the Indian entrees seem to have caught on (and I don't think that's just because of the buying power of the diaspora), though I have seen some limited runs from Loma Linda for vegan Mexican-type pouch meals.
I feel like there's a specific tipping point we haven't quite hit in any of the waves of new tech in alt-proteins so far, and nobody's exactly sure what it is or how to hit it. It does feel like many of the complaints about accessibility of labs and production facilities preventing any economy is largely coming from the mycoprotein ("lab meat") sector and that's a whole thing of its own. Beyond and Impossible leaned WAY too hard into making a substance "just like meat" for multiple markets that really did not want that. Other plant-protein products seem to struggle to reach escape velocity but it certainly FEELS like there's a market that would like to be reached.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:53 PM
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I'm an omnivore who doesn't like eating meat very much, primarily for its unpredictable texture--a random extra-chewy bit in something is extremely unpleasant to me when it's meat. I love beans and legumes and vegetables. I'm also someone who gets carb crash easily, which means I feel a lot better if more of the calories I consume are from protein or fat.
I think something often missing from the protein discussion is that even though it's easy to get enough protein for your body's nutritional needs on a vegan diet, if your blood sugar is sensitive to such things, it can be hard to consume enough calories with a high enough ratio of them from protein; most beans are pretty carb-heavy and even with high amounts of fiber slowing the effects, they can be a lot. Tofu, tempeh, and soy curls are of course a useful way around this but they are more complicated to manufacture and handle than dried legumes.
posted by needs more cowbell at 3:29 AM
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Lyn Never, have you seen KFC's vegan tenders? I was kinda hoping for Kentucky Fried Cauliflower, but these plantbased things did confirm my suspicion that it doesn't matter much what they put inside that coating.
(I do kind of prefer the crinkliness of the coating on the chicken version, which I guess they left out itentionally because it would get to hard to tell them apart.)
posted by demi-octopus at 3:35 AM
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Although we recognize the climate benefits, the main reason we don't eat meat at our house is that it makes my spouse violently ill, as does dairy. As a vegan (except for eggs) not by choice, he really appreciates, as Lyn Never says, being able to get an Impossible Whopper on a road trip, the local pub that makes great vegan reubens and gyros using some of those meat substitutes, and the pizza place that gives the option of a decent fake mozzarella and pepperoni. As the person who does most of the cooking, I appreciate having the option to just make Beyond Brats and tater tots on a Friday night (like i just did). We also patiently soak dried beans and cook great bean filled dishes, but sometimes we just want convenience foods. Having these options makes our lives easier.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:26 AM
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Being a vegetarian doesn't mean you don't like meat, it just means you choose not to eat it. Also, I don't eat meat for a variety of reasons but that doesn't mean I all of a sudden start loving vegetables and want to eat nothing but beans or whatever. I love that I can eat something pretty damn close to a hamburger without an animal dying for it
posted by Television Name at 10:01 AM
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Yeah, my read is that this is about producing upfs with lower input costs, mostly for convenience and fast food markets. They happen to be vegan because vegan inputs and yeast scaffolds are cheapest. But these are fundamentally ultra processed industrial foods.
posted by bonehead at 7:56 PM
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