[HN Gopher] Beyond has dropped "meat" from its name and expanded...
___________________________________________________________________
Beyond has dropped "meat" from its name and expanded its high-
protein drink line
Author : rmason
Score : 201 points
Date : 2026-03-16 20:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (plantbasednews.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (plantbasednews.org)
| jaybyrd wrote:
| 100% a better move for the company. expansion into more sectors
| isn't always a good idea but totally works in this case
| shrubble wrote:
| I'm curious about how much money was taken out by insiders who
| must have known what their costs were internally and how little
| advancement was made on making the same product at a lower cost.
| Simulacra wrote:
| I don't think it was ever the moment, even though there has
| always been a market for plant-based foods, the company assumed
| that market was far larger than it ever was or will be.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 100% of all people alive right now eat plant based food every
| day.
| Simulacra wrote:
| It would seem the company, and the market disagrees with you
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What did you eat today?
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| So true. All protein on the planet, was made from sunlight
| and photosynthesis. You can eat the animal that ate the
| plants, but then you lose out on tons of micronutrients and
| fiber.
| bsjshshsb wrote:
| Aren't some amino acids synthesized in animals?
| globular-toast wrote:
| None that we need and can't get directly from plants.
| bsjshshsb wrote:
| Ok but I am wondering about the truth of:
|
| > All protein on the planet, was made from sunlight and
| photosynthesis
| globular-toast wrote:
| Ah, yeah, some amino acids are synthesised in animals. We
| synthesise a handful of them ourselves. But there are
| still a bunch that we can't synthesise and need to get
| from our diet. I think that goes for all animals. Since
| you need a complete supply of _all_ amino acids to make
| protein then plants provide the essential link in the
| chain so you could say it all comes from photosynthesis
| ultimately.
| goosejuice wrote:
| The market is clearly differentiated by animal tissue,
| specific ones in fact.
| justin66 wrote:
| > high-protein fizzy drink line
|
| _That_ is the plan?
| sethhochberg wrote:
| High-protein everything is riding the wave of GLP-1 popularity
| right now. Doctors are begging people on that class of drugs to
| chase protein targets more similar to what might have
| previously been reserved for heavy weightlifters just to
| prevent muscle wasting.
|
| As a result, the entire packaged food industry is pumping up
| protein numbers and marketing it as the primary attribute of
| the food (where they might have previously marketed low fat or
| low sugar or whatever else in the past).
|
| So, saturated market... but certainly one people are investing
| in now.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Can verify. Am on a GLP-1 drug and I eat seek much more
| protein and fiber than before.
| asdff wrote:
| I hear the most ironic stuff on glp from the people I know on
| it. So doctor is obviously a reasonable person with an
| interest in making people healthy, not trying to set up glp
| addicts, and are encouraging better diet and increased
| exercise while eventually tapering and getting them off the
| glp entirely as the final end goal.
|
| The whole time they are telling me this I can't help but
| wonder what the hell is the point of the glp1 here? You still
| have to improve diet and regularly exercise anyhow. So its
| like there is no point. Might as well just rip the bandaid
| off, diet and exercise, get there 6 months slower, while not
| taking the glp. Like wouldn't you want to actually increase
| muscle mass while burning fat?
| orwin wrote:
| I lost weight the regular way. You don't understand how
| much will I expend to not continuously eat. The strategy I
| deploy: I never have ready-to-eat anything home, I cook
| everything just before I eat it, I chose ingredients based
| on their satiety index, I always have something to drink. I
| fast 5 days every year to 'reset' my grahlin levels (it
| still hurts, even if it's way less than it used to). I'm
| still at 26 BMI, so overweight (from 33 to 28 in 3 years,
| from 28 to 26 in 5).
|
| I have a very good support system. Not to brag, but my
| parents are amazing, my family have a small amounts of
| doctors who helped me getting through it at first. My
| siblings are great too, and my SO support me despite my
| quirks. I love sailing, which is a great way to loose
| weight. And I'm a SWE, the easiest job there is when you're
| not bad at it, that makes good money without real
| responsibilities or stress. It was still fucking hard. If
| glp1 can help people less lucky than me, let them have it.
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| The "easily constrained" people like the person you are
| responding too don't understand. I'm not sure they ever
| will.
|
| Ive also done it the right way, and it was literally
| easier, by far, to get a masters degree while working 40
| hours a week than it was to drop from 250 to 175.
| Incomparable. The constant mental pressure to eat, to eat
| more, to search the cabinets, to stop at x on the way
| home, etc.
|
| I've heard "wow sounds like a severe addiction" yeah no
| shit. It's an addiction to a substance you MUST have 2-3x
| a day. Imagine if you needed alcohol twice a day to live.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > while eventually tapering and getting them off the glp
| entirely as the final end goal
|
| It's an honourable goal but the evidence isn't great for
| that
|
| > You still have to improve diet and regularly exercise
| anyhow
|
| You don't have to. Should though.
|
| When the drugs are working as intended, you'll lose weight
| without 'trying' to improve your diet, exercise will speed
| up the weight loss, but isn't strictly necessary for it to
| "work". Encouraged, sure, but you'll get weight loss from
| the appetite suppression alone.
|
| The 'high protein' advice is because a lot of glp1
| consumers had poor diets to begin with, and they're
| catabolic drugs. Combine that with reduced appetite and
| you're at risk of insufficient protein consumption to
| maintain whatever muscle mass you started with.
| blargey wrote:
| Because long-term calorie restriction is 100x harder than
| popping a pill and downing a protein-and-fiber shake, and
| you can't outrun a burger but you can outlift a calorie
| deficit, so lumping them all together under "improve diet
| and exercise somehow" is a nonsensical rhetorical flourish
| / troll move?
| jawilson2 wrote:
| If you are 3-400+ pounds, quickly shedding 100+ pounds
| makes exercising MUCH easier, and the accompanying loss in
| appetite will HOPEFULLY teach you better portion sizes.
| Countless morbidly overweight people have tried for
| years/decades to lose weight, without success, and GLPs
| allow them to bootstrap the process.
|
| Yes, CICO, blah blah, but overcoming food addiction by
| asking people to eat less is like forcing a smoker who
| wants to quit to work at a cigar bar or something. You
| can't just not buy food, especially if you have a family
| you have to feed.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Don't forget the US administration jumping on the train and
| throwing the full weight of the diet culture, sorry "Healthy
| eating" clique at "Ending the war on protein" as an absurd
| part of the culture war.
|
| Very fun. The only war on protein I have been a part of is
| personally removing hundreds of pounds of protein from
| circulation. By eating it. I think I'm winning.
| MarceliusK wrote:
| The fitness market has been moving in that direction for years
| 3rodents wrote:
| I disagree with the idea that it's "not the moment for plant-
| based meat". Beyond Meat has a fantastic product that does very
| well in lots of markets. The problem is that Beyond Meat the
| company was valued as some sort of once in a generation radical
| reimagining of the way we eat. Beyond Meat's product is not going
| to change the world, it's just a good product.
|
| If Beyond Meat had grown organically, instead of raising hundreds
| of millions of dollars, it would be a great company doing great
| things today. Instead, it has failed to live up to the
| unrealistic expectations that were set for it. Beyond Meat is no
| different than any of the other zirpicorns.
| paxys wrote:
| Yup, the product is fine, but there's a reason all the other
| brands in the freezer aisle aren't raising hundreds of millions
| of dollars at 100x multiples. Burgers don't scale like
| smartphone apps.
|
| Here's a comparison - Tyson Foods, best known for their frozen
| meat, had a revenue of $54.44 billion last year. Their current
| market cap is $21.77 billion.
|
| Beyond Meat reported an annual revenue of $87.9 million in
| their 2018 S-1, and post-IPO reached a peak market cap of $14.1
| billion.
|
| See the issue with these numbers?
| nickff wrote:
| I think that 'real product' (as opposed to software)
| companies would actually benefit more from raising capital
| from equity instead of 'bootstrapping', because of the taxes
| on retained earnings, which have a disproportionate impact on
| capital-intensive business. That said, I agree that the P/E
| multiple on Impossible and Beyond were best described by the
| descriptors in their respective names...
| bsjshshsb wrote:
| I was having trouble understanding the issue then I realized
| 87.9 MILLion with an M. Ok I see lol.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I feel like AI and "tech" has normalised billions way too
| much. So even as millions are really a lot we don't even
| think about those anymore... Crazy crazy world.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The way the market has moved away from valuing "just a good
| product" (and, by extension, "just a good service", "just a
| good business", and "just a good employee") is one of the
| factors destroying life as the developed world has known it for
| 80 years.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| the market didn't. The investors did
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I guess I think of the investors as more representative of
| "The Market" than the traditional entities (producers,
| consumers) - which is the whole problem.
| choilive wrote:
| Investors are not part of the market?
| xp84 wrote:
| The investors? They _were_ part of the market. But after
| the front fell off they've been towed outside the market.
|
| And it's perfectly safe out there. There's nothing out
| there but mission statements and TAM slides and pea-
| protein slurry.
|
| And $1.8 billion of burned cash.
| dgxyz wrote:
| Yeah exactly that. It's just pretty damn good. It's just not
| universe changing.
|
| Hope this doesn't kill them.
| marricks wrote:
| 100%, a product can't be just good and succeed now. Market's
| expect something to be "the next thing" or become a failure.
|
| Also, price is always going to be an issue. The US spends
| billions and billions of dollars supporting the meat industry.
| The fact meat is cheap is a political choice, which makes
| direct plant based substitutes a tough financial proposition.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZgfTarNxdY
| legitster wrote:
| I have the opposite reaction. Beyond Meat is _not_ a good
| product. It tastes gross.
|
| It's not as good as the meat it's comparing itself against, and
| it's not as good as the vegetarian options also available in
| the store, and it's more expensive than either.
|
| Anytime can "be the moment" for plant-based meat if the product
| technology was there, but it's not.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > it's not as good as the vegetarian options also available
| in the store
|
| I've tried the beyond burgers, they were alright taste wise,
| but yeah there's many other options for a protein source.
|
| Beyond Meat was never going to convince people to eat less
| meat by substituting it for fake burgers and steaks. For
| people that already eat vegetarian there already tastier
| sources of protein. Lentils, beans, quinoa, chickpeas,
| mushrooms, nuts & seeds, etc. All of those have much more
| flexibility with how you can incorporate them into dishes
| than a fake slab of "meat."
|
| > more expensive than either.
|
| This is a political problem. In the US animal agriculture
| receives far more funding than plant-based protein. Without
| government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would cost
| closer to $30-$40. We've historically defined food security
| int he US as "meat and dairy," two of the things we really
| need to consume less of because of environmental impacts.
|
| But yeah, Beyond Meat wasn't going to get us there. We need
| real political changes, not fake meat.
| mft_ wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| I'm ~97% vegetarian but there are a few foods for which
| traditional vegetarian alternatives are rubbish. One of
| these is the burger: you either get some odd veg/potato
| base pattie, a large grilled mushroom, or halloumi. The
| meat substitute burgers aren't close to real beef burgers,
| but they're far tastier than other vegetarian options.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| This is where beyond is doing so well because their
| burgers really are a lot closer to the real thing.
|
| They're a lot better than a crappy low quality beef
| burger even, like a McDonald's patty. Not quite as good
| as a real steakhouse burger, but kinda in between.
| There's another brand that's about as good, impossible
| burger. Probably a bit better even but I've never tried
| them side by side.
|
| The soy and potato varieties yes they're way worse than
| even McDonald's. They're not even trying to simulate a
| real burger, just the idea of 'some fried gunk on a bun'.
| But yeah no.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| +1 Burger King has the impossible whopper and it's
| definitely better than the McDo smash patties (big mac,
| mcdouble, cheeseburger etc). Obviously different
| restaurants, so not really making the comparison at the
| store, but speaking to the levels of conparison.
| gs17 wrote:
| > a large grilled mushroom
|
| I really want to know why restaurants keep thinking this
| is a good alternative. I've never had one that wasn't
| just a mess to eat, and it's weirdly common to have
| people think it contains a significant amount of protein.
| However, I'm very happy with most veg patties, and would
| love halloumi as an option over Beyond any day.
| mft_ wrote:
| Many non-vegetarian restaurants don't seem to care about
| the vegetarian options, and just offer almost default
| options. It's probably down to the attitude of the chef -
| similarly to how you can sometimes tell whether the chef
| is a 'sweet' lover or not, by the relative quality of the
| main courses vs. the desserts.
|
| I first noticed this years ago when eating out with a (my
| first?) vegetarian friend in a variety of (omnivorous)
| restaurants and gastropubs. The number of times he'd have
| to choose the goats' cheese tart became a running joke.
| malfist wrote:
| I disagree, I enjoy beyond and impossible beef and their
| sausage. I'll often (though not always) opt for it while
| out because I think it tastes close enough to the real deal
| and doesn't have the ethical concerns of real meat. I am
| not vegetarian or vegan, though I do sympathize with their
| point of view. If bean burgers actually tasted good I might
| occasionally get those but they're gross
| legitster wrote:
| > If bean burgers actually tasted good I might
| occasionally get those but they're gross
|
| Bean burgers are actually delicious depending on the
| brand and how you dress them up. It doesn't taste like a
| smash burger, but if you get a brand that grills up nice
| and crispy and pair it with a nice spicy mayo, it's
| legitimately a good burger.
|
| Also, don't sleep on the humble Boca burger which has
| existed for decades. It's not as good looking as Beyond
| Beef but I would argue it's better tasting.
| malfist wrote:
| Every time I've tried a bean burger, including the boca
| burger it's always been immensely disappointing. Other
| people love them, and that's fine, but bean burgers are
| more burger adjacent than burger substitute. It's a
| different thing with a different flavor profile, even if
| it's shaped and styled like a hamburger. Beyond meat
| though, it's a burger substitute. Tasted so close to real
| meat that unless it's been undercooked or over salted
| it's hard to tell a difference.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| I feel this way as well. There was a moment in time
| several years ago where I would see the alt-meat burgers
| in restaurants and so I would order them from time-to-
| time because they tasted fine and it didn't kill a cow.
| Now I hardly see it available, or, if I do, it costs
| extra.
| malfist wrote:
| I think part of the reason they've disappeared from menus
| is they were setup to fail. Often times the only option
| for it was just a basic hamburger. Place might have a
| dozen types of hamburgers but the alt_meat was only an
| option for the most boring basic cheeseburger
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I happily eat real meat, I'm not vegetarian or vegan and
| I think Beyond burgers are pretty darn good. I'm just
| cheap and Beyond isn't.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Lentils, beans, quinoa, chickpeas, mushrooms, nuts &
| seeds, etc. All of those have much more flexibility
|
| With that flexibility comes inconvenience. With fake meat
| burgers or sausages I just have to whack the oven on and
| boil some veg to go alongside. That's family dinner. With
| lentils I have to s think more about how to make it tasty
| for everyone.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Without government subsidies, a pound of ground beef
| would cost closer to $30-$40._
|
| This is absolute nonsense, but I'm curious why you believe
| this to be the case?
| tombert wrote:
| I know that there's a lot of reasons for this, but at least in
| my area, the Beyond Meat products are considerably more
| expensive than actual animal meat.
|
| I'm sure that's due to depressing subsidies or economies of
| scale, but regardless of the reason it's kind of hard for me to
| justify buying something that will taste like a "not-quite-as-
| good-as-the-thing-half-the-price" burger.
|
| They are pretty good, don't get me wrong, it's just something
| that I have trouble purchasing.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > I'm sure that's due to depressing subsidies
|
| Based on what data do you make such unsubstantiatable
| statements?
| xenospn wrote:
| It's not exactly a secret that farmers are highly
| subsidized and without it beef would be extremely
| expensive. Same in every country, pretty much.
| tombert wrote:
| You know, I am actually having trouble substantiating
| that.
|
| I was just parroting what I heard but doing a search I
| found a bunch of posts claiming that subsidies don't
| actually affect the price that much, and I cannot find a
| primary source for the $30/pound figure I have always
| heard.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| As a vegetarian that regularly uses plant-based substitutes:
| I'm super reluctant to believe a market for a product like
| Beyond ever existed. Between Beyond and Impossible they've got
| this weird chimera market, especially the latter, with their
| too-realistic product. If meaters cared they'd switch, there
| wasn't really a whole lot of fence sitting I don't think--not
| in reality. I think people were pretty well committed. I also
| think the sympathetic market of vegetarians and vegans didn't
| find the premise of these too-realistic products especially
| thrilling. And I don't think that's a huge market in the first
| place, at least not in a large portion of the US.
|
| Then you factor in the costs and it's _Beyond_ insanity.
|
| And frankly I don't know if Beyond was doing anything
| legitimately novel. Impossible was over-engineering their
| burger to the extent that I wouldn't eat one from any
| restaurant because I couldn't tell whether it was be'f or beef.
| Beyond just seemed to be nu-gardein which I'll grant you--it's
| a Monsanto subsidiary--but the product is palettable,
| consistent, and available almost universally and has been as
| long as I've been on the diet, 12 years.
| altairprime wrote:
| I can think of reasons they would need to diversify or collapse
| that relate to regulatory capture of the FDA by the current
| U.S. administration. Better some business that maintains
| continuity through hostile times than to collapse and see their
| future evaporate.
| MarceliusK wrote:
| It feels like a classic case of a product category being forced
| into a venture-scale narrative
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I think there was a fallacy that suddenly the whole of the
| general public would rush to stop eating meat and would accept
| a meat-like substitute; and that vegetarians craved something
| that tasted like meat.
|
| This of course was completely false, but far too many people
| let themselves get caught up in hype instead of reason.
|
| ---
|
| I remember having an excellent veggie burger at a bar, and then
| when I went back a year later, it was replaced by Beyond or
| Impossible, and the bar tender was pretty open about how it was
| gross but their distributor pushed it on them. That of course
| pissed off the vegetarians who didn't like meat and had no
| desire for a meat-like substitute.
| znpy wrote:
| It was never going to work.
|
| Proprietary food, that you can only buy from one company?
|
| Of course it was doomed to fail. It's not even about veganism,
| it's a cancerous idea.
| MrLeap wrote:
| Proprietary food.. that you can only buy from a single company
| are all doomed? Might I offer an example that, under some
| definitions, has not failed despite that strategy. The McRib.
|
| I was going to offer the twinkie but I guess hostess declared
| bankruptcy, so maybe you're right.
| XorNot wrote:
| It's not an unreasonable statement though that for the
| concept to work it has to "jellybean" though: many
| manufacturers, many variations, same basic product,
| ubiquitous availability.
|
| Where it sits as a "premium" good doesn't really work as a
| value proposition.
| flexagoon wrote:
| > Proprietary food, that you can only buy from one company
|
| Huh? Isn't that most of it, except for basic grocery
| ingredients?
| znpy wrote:
| > Isn't that most of it, except for basic grocery
| ingredients?
|
| Only if you live in the us.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Nevermind all of the specialty foods across the globe.
| Products made from basic ingredients and labeled to sell
| are everywhere. What exactly are you referring to?
| flexagoon wrote:
| I don't. I don't know where you live, but unless it's on a
| farm, branded foods are obviously not a US-only phenomenon.
| Anything even remotely processed will be based on
| proprietary recipes. Regular meat burgers and sausages are
| just as "proprietary" as Beyond Meat ones, let alone foods
| like candy bars or snacks. Do you think Snickers bars are
| not proprietary?
| Jensson wrote:
| Bread, cheese etc have names that says what it is that is
| unrelated to brand. That is the normal way for most
| products, a minority of products in the grocery stores I
| visit are brand only, most things you can get essentially
| the same from another brand. Exception would be sodas and
| candy and such, but that is a tiny fraction of what
| people buy.
|
| Its like when I go to a pizza place I can get the same
| pizzas regardless where I go even though they are all
| independent, the recipe for most things people eat in the
| world are not secrets, its stuff anyone can make and
| sell.
| ben_w wrote:
| If that was a good argument, neither Quorn nor Linda McCartney
| Foods would have been successes.
|
| They're both doing fine.
|
| And Huel.
|
| Likewise beyond just substitutes, all specific sodas, sweets,
| biscuits*, most breakfast cereals, etc.
|
| * I'm British by birth, I don't mean those scones Americans
| have with "gravy".
| Grimblewald wrote:
| I always wondered who their demographic was. The core early
| adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of
| plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt
| bomb their daily driver (never mind issues surrounding industrial
| agriculture). Health-conscious folks would take one look at the
| ingredient list and bail because of the heavy processing and
| industrial fillers. You've got bodybuilders and athletes skipping
| it because it lacks the micronutrient density and bioavailability
| of real animal protein. Everyday folks aren't exactly lining up
| to pay a "green premium" for something that tastes almost like a
| burger but costs more and offers less. It feels like they built a
| product for a tiny, hyper-specific niche: people who desperately
| crave the experience of a fast-food patty but have an ideological
| dealbreaker with meat, while being well off enough that finances
| aren't carefully managed and loose enough in their convictions
| that a burger-joint is still ok. It always seemed like an odd
| propsition to me, even if cool in some ways.
| 3rodents wrote:
| Beyond Meat aren't unique, there are dozens of brands offering
| the same product. Tens of millions of people eat these type of
| products. Any (or most) burger-serving restaurant in Europe
| will have a Beyond Meat or equivalent on the menu. They're not
| always advertised as vegan (because of preparation and extras)
| but these fake burgers are very popular, for many reasons.
| Den_VR wrote:
| At the time it was a unique product. My alternatives reminded
| me more of basically black-bean patties than beef. Then
| impossible meat did it better, industry decided there was
| money in this direction, and now there's "or equivalent"
| everywhere.
| markdown wrote:
| Fake?
|
| In my part of the world, a burger is a type of sandwhich, and
| the definition doesn't require meat. So it's a burger whether
| it contains beef, fish, chicken, a vegan patty, a large slice
| of tomato, or whatever.
| goosejuice wrote:
| What part of the world, and how recently? Sure a burger is
| a sandwich, likely being a spin off of Hamburg steak.
|
| Given all sandwiches, what in your part of the world makes
| a sandwich a burger? I think for many of us it's a ground
| patty. If said patty isn't meat, yes we might say that is
| fake as in an imitation of the original. It's not a
| negative thing.
| deaux wrote:
| > What part of the world, and how recently? Sure a burger
| is a sandwich, likely being a spin off of Hamburg steak.
|
| The 95.8% of the world population that isn't in the US.
| This is simple to deduce because everywhere else calls "a
| piece of fried chicken in a burger bun" a "chicken
| _burger_". Only the US calls it a "chicken sandwich".
| Some of Canada might now use the latter through US
| influence - any Canadians here?
|
| KFC is a representative example, they call them "KFC
| chicken sandwich" only in the US, "burgers" effectively
| everywhere else.
| goosejuice wrote:
| I suspect Commonwealth or Asia. Is your definition of
| sandwich cold things between sliced bread and burger hot
| things in a bun?
|
| A piece of hot chicken between bread in Italy would
| likely be a panino, france a sandwich, spain a bocadillo,
| Portugal sandes, Japan a sando, mexico a torta, Argentina
| a sanguche.
|
| I think you overestimate how many people use burger for
| things that don't refer to the American concept. A lot of
| cultures have hot sandwiches and thus (ham)burger is
| often distinctly the American concept of a ground beef
| patty. Where this breaks down outside of the Commonwealth
| is often from cultures without things in bread that got
| exposed to the generic burger via fast food chain
| terminology. Not surprising there.
| deaux wrote:
| This comment getting downvoted is one of the most "US
| Defaultism" expressions I've seen on HN. Should've posted
| it when the US is asleep!
| peacebeard wrote:
| That's a really good point. Maybe in part because Beyond had
| a highly visible IPO they became the poster child for the
| success or failure of meat alternatives but in reality their
| story is pretty much just their own story.
| edm0nd wrote:
| >I always wondered who their demographic was.
|
| Wealthy hippies, vegans, and yuppies.
| benmusch wrote:
| being an ethical vegan does not mean you like the taste of
| plants (or, at least, that you don't miss the taste of meat).
| I'm veg and very much miss having access to meat.
|
| I'm an occasional buyer of their product, but the issue for me
| is just the versatility. It's really only a replacement for the
| most generic ways to prepare a burger/sausage. The moment you
| try to use the ground beef in, say, a chili recipe, it's a
| totally mis-matched flavor
| mschild wrote:
| Based on my bubble, vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters that
| do want to decrease their meat consumption.
|
| At this point, in Germany at least, discounter brands like Lidl
| and Aldi have beaten Beyond Meat at their game though. They
| produce alternatives that taste as good or better, for
| significantly less money.
| scythe wrote:
| Yeah, I never understood what Beyond's core innovation was.
| Impossible had that whole synthetic heme thing going on.
| Beyond seemed almost like opportunistic mimicry. But
| Impossible turned out to be pretty expensive IIRC.
| leodler wrote:
| Aldi in Germany might be very different for all I know, but
| I've been vegan or vegetarian my entire adult life and I
| think every burger alternative besides Beyond/Impossible is
| quite awful, though I usually don't eat meat alternatives
| in the first place.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| In my opinion as a mostly-vegetarian who used to adore
| burgers as a kid, the Impossible brand was by far the most
| realistic (and my beef-loving partner would agree, they
| made stroganoff with it and loved it)... but the price
| truly is ridiculous at this point. It started out just
| barely justifiable, and it's simply too high now.
|
| I am more than a little bit outraged that animals who were
| raised in miserable industrial production facilities to
| meet an ugly end are having their parts sold for less than
| a decent alternative simply because of subsidies distorting
| the market.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Agree. Impossible is on a different planet in terms of
| being very very close to the taste of real meat.
| Unfortunately still premium priced.
|
| It's a pity that Beyond is getting so much attention
| because they're not the best ambassadors for meat
| alternatives. People will try it, and then decide to wait
| another 5 years before trying again.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If I look at walmart right now, they have Impossible
| 'ground beef' for $9/lb and real ground beef is more than
| $7/lb. So the price isn't too high everywhere.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Beyond was available well before Impossible was. I used a
| combination of Beyond and Boca as my primary substitutes
| for ground beef, until Impossible came along, and now I use
| almost exclusively Impossible.
|
| I don't feel like they have a niche anymore, but there was
| a time I considered them my top choice, before impossible
| dethroned them.
| xeromal wrote:
| I still eat impossible sausage as a substitute for pork and
| find it pretty dang good. I grew up in appalachia so we
| know our pork sausage and impossible seasoned well comes
| close.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| I have been vegan for 12 years. It is not that hard to make
| vegan burger patties at home. Or you can just cut up a block
| of tofu and season it to be eaten in a burger. Takes about
| the same time or less to cook as these Beyond grease fests.
| Besides there is so many cheaper alternatives these days that
| I very rarely buy them.
|
| We don't need meat alternatives. Vegan diet is
| cardiovascularly extremely healthy, seems to protect against
| most cancers, tastes good and is most importantly ethically
| and environmentally only viable option at this point. It's
| pretty cheap as well, tofu, lentils and veggies are not
| exactly expensive even without all the gazillion subsidiaries
| pumped into meat production. [Of course your vegan diet can
| consist of eating only canned soda and potato chips and that
| is not healthy nor cheap, but the problem there is that you
| are a moron, not that you are vegan].
|
| So the problem with meat alternatives is that you don't
| really need them and if you want burger patties etc. you can
| make them at home pretty easily or these days buy cheaper
| alternatives sold in most supermarkets.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > Beyond grease fests
|
| Vegans have a problem with avocados and beans now? THat's
| where the "grease" comes from in these fake meats.
| evilduck wrote:
| This was someone equating a chopped up tofu pattie with
| Beyond Meat, e.g. totally out of touch with the target
| market. Random ass food delivered via hamburger bun does
| not make it a hamburger analog, but Beyond, Impossible,
| etc do.
| mschild wrote:
| Convenience is king.
|
| I get where you are coming from. I try to buy unprocessed
| as much as possible, but there are days where I want
| something that I could do myself or buy premade from the
| grocery store. On days like that, I'm glad I have the
| option to buy premade even if my self-made version tastes
| better, is healthier, and often cheaper.
|
| Besides that, its a good tool to get the general omnivore
| to reduce meat consumption. A friend of mine does eat meat
| but is lowering her consumption of it. Having a convenient
| alternative that she doesn't have to think about and can
| just get prepackaged helped her half her meat consumption
| in a effectively a few weeks.
| samusiam wrote:
| Vegan for 15 years. I cook 95% of my own meals, including
| black bean burgers, tofu, etc... Sometimes I want something
| that tastes like meat and I reach for a Beyond or
| Impossible burger. I don't need it. But I can't recreate
| its texture and flavor profile on my own. It's not "better"
| than other things I can cook. It's just different.
| brailsafe wrote:
| > ethically and environmentally only viable option at this
| point
|
| Seems like a broad statement that I don't agree with, but
| why would it be the most important aspect unless the
| framework is a religious one and that's where your ethical
| framework derives from? It's a dietary choice, nothing
| more, and if you feel that way it's perfectly fine to do
| so, but don't blow it out of proportion.
|
| I personally tend to enjoy some vegan food, and enjoy the
| people in my life who are vegan or choose other
| restrictions as they see fit, but if they decided it was
| important beyond that, such that it might impact our
| relationship, I'd let just let them because it's a bit
| silly. Eat meat, don't eat meat, pick your suppliers of
| whatever you eat carefully if you have the means and choose
| to, have your personal principles whatever they are, all
| the more power, it's just not much more than that, no?
| tirant wrote:
| I love meat and I love good hamburgers. I've tried those Lidl
| and Aldi alternatives and they were uneatable for me and my
| family. They have slowly disappeared from the shelves. Only a
| couple of products remain.
|
| I have never tried BeyondMeat but I'd be surprised that it's
| so bad.
|
| And I have eaten many classic vegan burger alternatives based
| on lentils, peas and chickpeas. They didn't aim to taste like
| meat and were actually edible.
| k__ wrote:
| In my experience, the pea-based products are pretty good.
|
| I'm a huge burger fan and stopped eating meat at home,
| thanks to this wave of vegan alternatives.
| asdff wrote:
| My vegetarian friends can now go to a restaurant (or better
| example yet, any event space like sports event or theme park,
| since having a veggie burger is pretty easy to check a box and
| satisfy dietary restrictions) and get any of the burger
| offerings on the menu with a beyond patty. Before that, the
| vegetarian option of only resort was often much more depressing
| and unsubstantial.
| antonymoose wrote:
| Reading this somewhat reminds me how the Gluten Free trend
| led to a lot more options for my friend with celiac.
|
| Still, one wonders does "buying a fake burger at the ball
| park with my friends" translate to actual fandom and further
| consumption or is it just a a captive consume picking the
| least-worst option.
|
| The impression I've gotten is for the latter.
| asdff wrote:
| It is the latter. For a few of them they swear off
| impossible and tolerate beyond or vice versa. And of course
| some restaurants with their own bean burger formulations
| are sometimes whiffs but also other times completely blow
| any fake meat option out of the water.
| zvqcMMV6Zcr wrote:
| > led to a lot more options for my friend with celiac.
|
| Did it really? I have hear some complaints that before
| "gluten free" meant it doesn't contain those allergens at
| all and now it only means "there are no grains on
| ingredient list". And with amount of cross-contamination in
| food industry that is nowhere near enough for people with
| allergy.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i actually miss black bean burgers being more common. now it
| seems like all you can find are beyond/impossible burgers at
| restaurants. i don't mind em once or twice a year but they
| knock me out more than melatonin so i usually avoid them.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > but they knock me out more than melatonin
|
| for a lot of people that could be a selling point
|
| (not you, themselves!)
| qingcharles wrote:
| This. They can now eat more than french fries off the menu.
| mystraline wrote:
| Thats the thing... Really really good vegetarian and vegan food
| tastes amazing and is filling. And unless you're intentionally
| picking around for meat or meat products, you're not going to
| notice.
|
| A lot of Indian/Brahmin food is exactly that. Its insanely
| delicious.
|
| And we have Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat(is that the name?).
| Both instead of going "vegetarian done well is superb" went to
| "sorry its a sad reminder of a hamburger". And thats a problem.
| Nobody wants to be reminded that this is $10/lb and real
| hamburger is $5/lb.
|
| Ive also had problems with other 'meat substitues'. They're
| almost always plasticy or fake tasting, or chemically off.
|
| Whereas my tofu saag is delicious. And no meet or cheese
| needed... Although my favorite is saag paneer (cheese). I stay
| away from the fake-almost-but-not-quite foods.
| blackjack_ wrote:
| I'm like technically the exact demographic they should be
| chasing. Plant based eater who loves the taste of meat and just
| stopped eating it for ethical reasons. But like, I'm not gonna
| eat a heavily processed food often for the reasons stated
| above, and also it's just not great nutritionally compared to
| Seitan, which also actually just tasted better when prepared
| right. And it also doesn't stack up compared to high protein /
| extra firm tofu, which is incredible for cooking when frozen
| and then defrosted and cooked. And also made of soybeans, one
| of the cheapest food commodities in the world. So why would I
| pay 2x or 3x the amount of money for a drastically inferior
| product? Just when I want an exact burger replica, and once you
| are plant based for 3 or more years, you just don't really
| crave that anymore except as maybe a guilty pleasure once or
| twice a year.
|
| So like, sure it's fine, but it is already in a tough
| competition with other plant based foods.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| I haven't done a comparison of Beyond vs seitan for their
| nutritional value, but as someone who used to eat a lot more
| seitan I gleefully moved over to Beyond/Impossible. Seitan is
| packed full of gluten, which is much harder to digest. Seitan
| makes me uncomfortably bloated whereas Beyond/Impossible do
| not. And no, I don't have a gluten "intolerance" or Celiac.
| blackjack_ wrote:
| Seitan has 3x-5x the protein of beyond meat by weight. It
| sucks that your body processes it less. For me it's usually
| a treat, and I've never noticed any digestive issues
| despite having issues with more whole wheat things (beer,
| more natural whole wheat breads).
|
| I'm glad you like the beyond meat though. Good for them to
| have actual consistent customers for the 2x / year I end up
| eating it!
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| My partner and I joke that seitan filled sandwiches are
| protein bread sandwiches lol. Def like the taste of
| seitan though!
| jermberj wrote:
| > once you are plant based for 3 or more years, you just
| don't really crave that anymore except as maybe a guilty
| pleasure once or twice a year.
|
| This has been the exact opposite of my experience.
|
| source: vegan for 14 years, vegetarian for 2 years prior to
| that, carnist for the initial 22 years. :)
| Schiendelman wrote:
| What's making you believe Beyond is more "heavily processed"
| than seitan? I think you might be surprised...
| p1necone wrote:
| I feel like fast food is a pretty big market for stuff like
| this. Burger King in New Zealand has had plant based
| alternatives to the whopper and chicken burger on the menu for
| > 1 year now so it must be doing ok. I'm not even vegetarian
| and I get them sometimes, they're pretty good (especially the
| chicken one - they changed the recipe a while ago and it's now
| practically indistinguishable from the real chicken option,
| although that probably says more about their standard chicken
| than it does about the meat free option).
|
| There's no premium for the plant based versions I don't think
| (or if there is it's small enough that I never noticed), and I
| think you're underestimating how many vegans/vegetarians still
| want junk food.
| dgxyz wrote:
| Personally I really fucking like meat but having done a couple
| of weeks in a slaughterhouse, I don't want to eat it. Gives me
| nightmares. Seriously.
|
| This is a good filler product.
| level87 wrote:
| This is the insight that most people need but will never
| have, empathy for other living things seems to be greatly
| lacking amongst the general population.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I don't think that's a fair framing of the problem because
| it focuses on empathy towards the animals while forgetting
| the empathy towards the humans.
|
| Going vegan is not a zero-cost choice. It can be difficult,
| expensive, and in some cases even impossible due to health
| issues. Some users here complain about the meat subsidies
| without acknowledging that meat is pretty great when you're
| in the bottom of the economic pyramid and need food that's
| cheap, quick, and will provide a fair nutritional value.
|
| I don't think you can live in a modern city without
| supporting some type of cruelty, as most phones and clothes
| alone would already be a no-go. It's not that people don't
| have empathy, but rather that there's only so much one can
| do in a day and one has to pick their battles. If you want
| to dedicate extra time and energy into animal well-being
| that's great, but let's not point the finger at those who
| lack those extra resources as if it were an individual
| moral failing.
| level87 wrote:
| You make a valid point, but my comment wasn't about
| resources, it was about empathy. Factory farming isn't
| sustained by poverty, it's sustained by indifference. The
| majority of people who could easily choose alternatives
| simply don't think about it.
|
| I grew up in a poor household and we were vegetarian,
| because we saw animals as living things with feelings,
| not commodities whose pain and suffering is meaningless.
|
| I agree you can't live without some level of cruelty, but
| you can certainly live without contributing to one of its
| most obvious forms.
| wyre wrote:
| Empathy for other living things isn't a fair framing for
| the problem? what?? Eating less meat being difficult,
| expensive, or complicated do to health issues are
| excuses. Most people don't even try to consume less
| animal products.
|
| The riches of capitalism is built off of the suffering of
| humans, that doesn't mean it isn't important to try to
| minimize the suffering of other animals that literally
| have no ability to escape their circumstances.
| mattas wrote:
| I agree with this. As a veggie, the texture, taste, smell,
| color of meat grosses me out. I don't want not-meat that
| appears to be meat.
|
| I want not-meat that is definitely not meat.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I guess for people like me. I eat meat, and I eat burgers. I
| can't speak for Beyond Meat, but when at restaurants, the
| Impossible Burger often tastes better than the real beef
| (likely because the former is pre-seasoned).
|
| There are plenty of meat eaters who want to eat these as a way
| to cut down their meat consumption. They don't want to become
| vegetarians, though.
| delecti wrote:
| > The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually
| like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made
| ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver
|
| Why not? I think there's a false conflation of veganism and
| health food (and gluten-free, though that's not relevant in
| this discussion). I love burgers, and fried chicken, and crappy
| chicken nuggets, but I don't want more animals to have to
| suffer for my sake than is necessary. I disagree on how hyper-
| specific that niche is.
|
| IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that
| it's hard for them to compete.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized
| that it's hard for them to compete.
|
| This is the real problem. Without all the government
| subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40
| today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now. $38 billion dollars
| in the US each year to subsidize meat and dairy, but only $17
| million goes to fruit and vegetable farmers. It's completely
| backwards, especially considering the climate impact on meat
| and dairy farming.
| AngryData wrote:
| Im calling BS on the $30-$40 a pound beef because ive
| raised my own cows for personal consumption and even if I
| paid myself $20 an hour for every second I spent with my
| cows, and assumed my alfalfa field usage could produce an
| expensive cash crop without fertilizer, and completely
| ignored the opportunity loss of only caring for 1-2 cows
| instead of 30+, that is still a cost WAY above what my beef
| costs.
| xethos wrote:
| Without taking a side, you've skipped every step past the
| field here. Transportation, butchering, packaging, and
| grocery store shelves, with profit margins, health /
| sanitation checks, and shrinkage at every step
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| not sure where the GP lives but in Canada even beef
| raised for personal consumption needs to meet most of
| those things you've listed, aside from grocery-related,
| and as someone who's bought directly from the producer
| (with 3rd party butchering) the price is not
| substantially lower than retail; scale likely makes up
| for a lot of the commercial supply chain costs.
| autoexec wrote:
| Don't forget the massive costs of lobbying governments to
| weaken regulations and reduce inspections and also the
| costs of bribing meat inspectors, and the legal expenses
| and lawyer fees required to defend themselves from
| lawsuits surrounding their illegal activities, then also
| the millions in fines they have to pay to settle lawsuits
| they lose about their bribing of meat inspectors or
| colluding to drive wages down or whatever other illegal
| thing they got caught doing. You can bet all those costs
| increase the prices we pay.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| We do things at industrial scale because that saves
| money. If a local butcher could pay a relatively tiny
| amount for direct cow shipping, save multiple steps, and
| sell the meat for 60% of the grocery store price, they'd
| instantly be booming with business.
| NewJazz wrote:
| And? They still add costs, even though those costs are
| perhaps lower than on a small scale.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It means that when AngryData "skips every step past the
| field" they didn't save any notable money by doing so.
| Their beef costs more than unsubsidized industrial beef
| would cost, so when they call BS on $30-40 that is a
| valid call.
| AngryData wrote:
| I still have to transport and pay for butchering and
| packaging myself which is done in a certified facility
| with sanitation checks. Oh sure grocery stores have to
| make a profit, but they also get better deals than I do
| for both transportation and butchering because they deal
| in bulk.
| yesfitz wrote:
| How much did your beef end up costing?
| thevillagechief wrote:
| I believe it. Every summer we buy goat or lamb imported
| from Australia/New Zealand. It's usually less than
| $15/lb. Those two countries barely provide any subsidies
| for their farmers, and the meat is cheaper than my local
| farmers, even with their strict biosecurity regulations.
| KnuthIsGod wrote:
| Australian citizen here.
|
| There are massive tax, fuel, land tax, health care
| subsidies for our farmers.
|
| Even doctors who cater to the remote areas where farmers
| dwell get extra payments from our governments.
|
| https://www.health.gov.au/topics/rural-health-
| workforce/clas...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Even doctors who cater to the remote areas where farmers
| dwell get extra payments from our governments._
|
| Very common in the United States, too.
|
| There are a lot of doctors who get their student loans
| reduced or paid off by state and local governments in
| exchange for working a certain number of years in less-
| desirable locations. I've worked with a number of them.
|
| There was an entire TV show based on it that ran on CBS
| for five years:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Exposure
| strken wrote:
| Yeah, it's absolute nonsense. I'm paying $34/kg for
| direct-to-consumer beef in Australia, a country with some
| of the lowest agricultural subsidies in the world,
| including delivery and at a premium markup, during a time
| that beef prices have hit a historical high due to
| processor capacity, and I'm getting prime cuts and roasts
| too, not just mince.
| gruez wrote:
| >Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground
| beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the
| $8-$10/lb it is now
|
| Source? That seems implausibly high.
|
| Using your $38B/year subsidy figure gets us $112/year in
| subsidies per American. There's no way you can get $30
| unsubsidized price from that unless you think the average
| American only eats beef once a week.
| CalRobert wrote:
| ... do they eat more?
|
| I would have thought once a week is high.
|
| Though median could differ from average. 12% of Americans
| eat half the beef
|
| https://sph.tulane.edu/how-mere-12-americans-eat-half-
| nation...
| Jensson wrote:
| Average American eat around 60 pounds a year, typically
| you eat less than a full pound when you eat so yeah they
| probably eat more than once per week.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-usa
|
| Given the $112 subsidies per year above, that would add
| $2 per pound of beef, that would slightly raise the price
| not balloon it to 30-40 as poster claimed. So he was
| bullshitting.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Average includes vegans, and I'm pretty sure they eat it
| less than once per week. It's just how much meat divided
| by population. The previous comment shows that the
| consumption is not anywhere close to equally distributed.
| elsjaako wrote:
| The subsidies are also paid by vegans. Both the average
| meat consumption and average subsidy can be multiplied by
| the total population to get the total.
| 9rx wrote:
| That doesn't really make sense, though, as rice -- one of
| the main ingredients in the aforementioned product --
| receives the highest subsidy rate in the USA. A Beyond Meat
| burger should be cheaper than a meat burger thanks to
| subsidies.
| scythe wrote:
| The key difference between the old vegans and the new vegans
| is hiding in plain sight. It's the Internet. It used to be
| that vegans went to vegan restaurants and had their own
| particular tradition of vegan cookery. People didn't just
| become vegan in isolation like they do today. The
| acculturated vegans still exist and I think that's who gp is
| referring to in that statement. The Internet vegans are
| different but they aren't that numerous -- few people even
| today would make such a change in their life based on
| something they read online.
| leodler wrote:
| Despite being a vegetarian and former vegan, this is not me
| wading into this debate to defend the figure provided by
| the OP of the original comment, but this is usually the
| source for the statistic AFAIK:
| https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...
|
| Regardless, it goes without saying (from other, more well-
| sourced research) that the disparity of subsidies and
| government assistance provided to industries that
| ultimately exist to produce meat compared to industries
| that produce fruit/vegetables is fucking absurd.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand the point you're trying to
| make well enough to know how to respond, other than to say
| vegan cooking traditions continue to exist and existed
| before the internet (though there were fewer vegans at the
| time)
|
| People did indeed become vegan in isolation before the
| internet, just as they do today.
|
| What exactly is the distinction you're trying to draw
| between "old vegans" and "new vegans", and how do you see
| it pertaining to this conversation (especially under a
| comment pointing out that plant-based burgers struggle to
| compete with traditional beef because of beef subsidies)?
| smelendez wrote:
| Yeah, I generally think people make adult diet choices on
| their own.
|
| People regularly cut out meat, alcohol, sugar, dairy,
| gluten, caffeine, fats, etc. based on things they've
| read, moral considerations, medical recommendations, and
| personal health observations, not because they've joined
| a community that eschews such things.
| hightrix wrote:
| I would argue the core problems are the massive amounts of
| salt and the fact that none of the meat alternatives tasted
| good. They all taste off.
| PrimalPower wrote:
| There's plenty of vegetarians due to ethical or cultural
| reasons that never acquired the taste for traditional plant
| based foods and are looking for a more substantial, protein
| heavy alternative.
|
| Is it niche? Yes, but vegetarians were always niche.
|
| While the late 2010s fixated on "protein" and "macros" -
| allowing products like Beyond or Soylent to shine.
|
| Much of the health discourse around the 2020s has focused on
| quality of the ingredients and "processed foods". So naturally
| Beyond is caught on the crossfire.
|
| Is there a future where this stuff is proven to be better for
| you in the short and long term? I sure hope so. But there's way
| too many unknowns right now and it's expensive to boot.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I actually like Beyond Meat patties, but I eat maybe a half-
| dozen "fake meat" burgers per year - that's not going to
| sustain a competitor when Americans eat an average of 3 beef
| burgers per week.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| There's no reason ethical vegans wouldn't go for ultra-
| processed foods. Beyond Meat just isn't a great option, it's
| expensive and not good enough to justify it. The selling point
| for them seems to be that they taste more like meat than most
| meat substitutes but as someone who has been vegan for a while
| that doesn't matter to me (unless I'm trying to match a non-
| vegan recipe). I get Morningstar Farms products vastly more
| often than Beyond Meat ones. Beyond and Impossible are maybe
| like my 4th and 5th most bought meat imitation brands and it's
| not like those other brands are less salty or processed. Idk
| why I only ever hear non-vegans mention Beyond and Impossible.
| lambda wrote:
| This is such a weird comment.
|
| Why do you think that "ethical vegans" like the "taste of
| plants" any more than anyone else? The whole point of being an
| ethical vegan/vegetarian is to not consume animals, not because
| you don't like the taste.
|
| Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over
| hamburgers. Sure, they're not perfect from a health food point
| of view, but they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than
| your average hamburger patty. So from a health conscious point
| of view, it's a decent substitute.
|
| Then there are the people who just want to reduce their meat
| consumption overall. Maybe they're not vegan or vegetarian, but
| they're trying to watch their saturated fat intake, or reduce
| their carbon impact, or they suffer from gout and are trying to
| reduce the amount of meat they eat to ease that.
|
| Sometimes you just want to go out with your friends for a
| burger, and the Beyond patty can make a better substitute than
| a black bean or mushroom patty that used to be common.
|
| And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it,
| it usually costs the same as a beef patty; it just provides
| another option, for the days I want to skip meat. I have, for a
| long time, done a low meat diet; I don't avoid it entirely, but
| I try not to eat it at every meal. It provides a nice
| alternative for that.
|
| Is it a bit of a niche market? Sure. But, not every product
| needs to be for everyone.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Nah, it _definitely_ costs extra at restaurants.
| afavour wrote:
| > And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for
| it
|
| I just did a quick search on Uber Eats in NYC. Every Beyond
| Burger I found was between $3-5 more than a regular burger.
| That's the reason I stopped eating them, I actually quite
| like the texture and flavor. I just don't like the price.
| fosco wrote:
| I never buy beyond/impossible at restaurants because of
| this.
|
| I often have some at home and instead of having two red
| meat burgers have one and one of these, occasionally when
| they go on sale at Costco I'll buy a bunch.
|
| I am not vegan or vegetarian but do seek ways to reduce my
| red meat intake which years ago was grilling ribeyes 4-5
| nights a week. I was unreasonably unhealthy and having
| alternate options helped balance my health out over the
| long run. I like both beyond burgers and impossible. I wish
| they were cheaper than hamburger meat, when I compare to
| buying hamburger meat in bulk it's still more expensive at
| this point
| xvector wrote:
| Eh I just decided that $3-5 extra is fine for not causing
| immense amounts of physical suffering to some poor animal
| for my burger meal.
| slashdev wrote:
| So you've decided it's more ethical it not be born or
| live at all. Obviously the only reason beef cattle exist
| at all is because we eat them.
|
| It doesn't seem such a clear cut ethical decision to me.
| Certainly there are some forms of raising livestock that
| are terrible (broiler chickens come to mind), but there
| are other forms that actually seem quite pleasant for the
| animals most of the time (e.g. free-range cattle).
| lithocarpus wrote:
| Beyond Burger ingredients:
|
| Yellow Pea Protein, Avocado Oil, Natural Flavors, Brown Rice
| Protein, Red Lentil Protein, 2% or less of Methylcellulose,
| Potato Starch, Pea Starch, Potassium Lactate (to preserve
| freshness), Faba Bean Protein, Apple Extract, Pomegranate
| Concentrate, Potassium Salt, Spice, Vinegar, Vegetable Juice
| Color (with Beet).
|
| Except for Vinegar, every one of these is an industrially
| processed/extracted/refined ingredient that humans never ate
| until within the last ~50 years.
|
| We have no way to even know if many of these are safe let
| alone healthy.
|
| I don't know of any evidence that these things are a decent
| substitute for meat and salt which humans have been eating
| for our entire history. And for those who actually believe
| animal fat and salt are unhealthy one could make burgers with
| lean meat and less or no salt.
| whakim wrote:
| There is no reason to believe that the foods humans have
| historically eaten are safer/healthier than "industrially
| processed/extracted/refined" food simply because we have
| historically eaten them. Evolution does not select for
| avoiding the health problems facing modern-day humans such
| as cancer or heart disease.
| dataflow wrote:
| No reason? How about financial incentives?
| KAMSPioneer wrote:
| Uhh I don't think that financial incentives are a valid
| reason to believe something is healthier or safer than an
| alternative. Unless I have missed some sarcasm.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| I mean there is a financial incentive to use byproducts
| of industrial processes that would otherwise be wasted,
| as food ingredients, and as there is no requirement to
| rigorously show that new ingredients are safe to consume
| in the US, this happens all the time and makes up a big
| portion of the average modern US diet.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| But the list of allegedly questionable foods above are
| all foods we already eat, just with some things removed
| (e.g., avocado oil is just avocado with the flesh
| removed; pea protein is peas with the carbs removed). It
| is not obvious to me how you would conclude these are
| unhealthy.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| Study Finds 82 Percent of Avocado Oil Rancid or Mixed
| With Other Oils
|
| https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-
| avo...
|
| "In three cases, bottles labeled as "pure" or "extra
| virgin" avocado oil contained near 100 percent soybean
| oil"
|
| You don't necessarily know what you are getting when you
| buy a processed ingredient, and there are huge financial
| incentives to not sell a top quality product when you can
| substitute other things or use cheaper processes to make
| it.
|
| Some portion of avocado oil sold today is refined with
| hexane, heated during the refining process, and likely
| heavily oxidized before consumption. (This is evidenced
| by the above paper, oxidized = rancid, and it's not a
| binary either/or there is a spectrum of how
| oxidized/rancid a fat can be.)
| lithocarpus wrote:
| I'm not saying they're healthier simply because we've
| historically eaten them.
|
| But there are many reasons to believe natural/traditional
| foods may be safer and healthier than new industrial
| foods. To name a few:
|
| 1) There's reason to believe our bodies may be more
| adapted to eating natural or traditional foods, having
| eaten them for hundreds of thousands of years rather than
| one or two generations.
|
| 2) Many highly processed foods have within decades of
| their introduction to our diet been found to be really
| bad for us. Refined sugars, refined oils, refined flours,
| artificial sweeteners, many of the weird additives, many
| synthetic compounds like methylcellulose (someone close
| to me is extremely sensitive to this one), on and on.
|
| 3) These new ingredients, new kinds of refining and
| processing, and even synthetic food compounds, do not
| have to undergo any rigorous testing to be shown to be
| safe before being added to food. Even if they do some
| studies for some of them, how would you really know it's
| not causing serious long term problems for say 1% of
| people? Or even 10%? The size and duration of a study
| you'd need to find them to be safe would be expensive and
| they generally don't do it, since they're not required
| to.
|
| 4) These new ingredients often introduce novel molecules
| to the body that the body may not be adapted to. I hope I
| don't need to explain how many novel molecules that were
| invented and widely used in recent decades have proved to
| be highly toxic.
|
| 5) We have a huge increase in severe chronic disease in
| recent decades. I won't claim here that this is primarily
| because of the changes to our diet from industrially
| processed foods, but diet is a top contender given that
| it's one of the biggest things that has changed in the
| human lifestyle, along with all the other novel
| substances our bodies come in contact with now.
|
| 6) We know of tons of people who were healthy to age 80,
| 90, 100, eating primarily/entirely natural foods. We
| don't yet have any examples of this with people eating a
| large portion of modern industrial foods that didn't
| exist 80 years ago. This is not proof that they're
| dangerous, I'm just saying we don't know and have reason
| to be cautious.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > There's reason to believe our bodies may be more
| adapted to eating natural or traditional foods, having
| eaten them for hundreds of thousands of years rather than
| one or two generations.
|
| This is an argument that no white people should be eating
| pineapples, mangos, bananas, kiwifruit, etc. Hell,
| probably not even apples.
| auggierose wrote:
| They will be fine, white people have, as everybody,
| African ancestors.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| No it is not.
|
| Different kinds of fruits from around the world may well
| have more in common with each other than categorically
| new synthetic compounds which are found in processed
| food.
|
| Pretty much all people ate real foods - plants, animals,
| and fungus, and ferments of these, all over the world.
| There are categorical chemical differences between this
| stuff and much modern food.
| missingdays wrote:
| > There's reason to believe our bodies may be more
| adapted to eating natural or traditional foods
|
| By this logic, you shouldn't eat modern meat, as its very
| different from the one our ancestors were eating. Modern
| meat is mostly fat
| lithocarpus wrote:
| I agree it's probably healthier to eat wild meat or
| homegrown meat grown on healthy pasture than it is to eat
| feedlot meat grown on whatever they feed them there.
| There are lots of differences between them.
|
| Not particularly because it has more fat though. While
| it's true that wild deer for example especially in warmer
| climates can have very little fat, there are plenty of
| animals that were traditionally eaten all over the world
| that have much higher proportions of fat. Fish, geese and
| ducks and many kinds of birds, whales and seals and lots
| of aquatic mammals, bears, etc.
|
| I'm not trying to argue in favor of industrial beef at
| all I'm just trying to say that natural animal fat isn't
| necessarily unhealthy. (I really want to know actually if
| it is, because I do eat a lot of it, and have for much of
| my life. As far as I can tell I'm very healthy but I'm
| always open to learning. I have not yet found any
| compelling evidence for natural animal fat being bad.)
| croes wrote:
| > I don't know of any evidence that these things are a
| decent substitute for meat and salt which humans have been
| eating for our entire history.
|
| I'm pretty sure humans eat potato, rice, peas etc. since a
| pretty long time.
|
| I'm also pretty sure that the meat our ancestors ate is a
| lit different from the meat we have now coming from animals
| optimized for meat production and fed with whatever
| produces the most meat and costs the least (mad cow disease
| anyone?).Not to mention the amount of meat we eat today
| compared to back then.
|
| The problem with processed food isn't that it is processed
| but that it makes it easy to consume too much
| lithocarpus wrote:
| Potato != extracted potato starch
|
| Peas != extracted pea protein
|
| They're not the same thing.
|
| I do agree that wild meat is probably a lot healthier
| than modern industrially farmed meat. Just as wild plants
| are probably often a lot healthier than modern
| monocropped plants grown with synthetic fertilizers
| rather than healthy soil.
| OJFord wrote:
| It doesn't actually say 'extracted' though, are we sure
| 'protein' actually implies that (i.e. separated it from
| other elements) vs. just being marketing copy to make
| 'yellow pea' et al. more exciting to certain people? (
| _Protein, grr. Meat replacement, protein, grr, yeah._ )
|
| Not to mention all cooking really _is_ is a bunch of
| refinement, extraction, chemical reaction, and heating
| processes anyway. I refine & extract & process in my
| kitchen all the time, including separating protein in
| milk (cheeses) or wheat flour (chaap, seitan, or for the
| starch) for example.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| FWIW pea protein as used in beyond burger is extracted
| from peas in an industrial process - it isolates the
| protein from the rest of the pea.
|
| Your point on cooking is fair. And, I'd still argue that
| modern processes introduce new types of chemistry that
| didn't exist in human food until very recently.
| baud147258 wrote:
| the issue with wild meat is going to be all parasites in
| the animal, at least according to friends who hunt (and
| when they managed to get something, which doesn't seem to
| be a given).
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| Reminds me of a joke I read online. "Plant Based Meat" is
| not Plant. It's not Based and it's not Meat.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| About as funny as complaining "oil" is used to refer to
| petroleum-based lubricants, avocado oil, etc. since the
| etymology of "oil" is strictly a reference to olive oil
| only.
|
| I can't stand this type of thing, just like people who
| get upset at terms like "oat milk" or "soy milk."
|
| Not really a dig at you, sorry.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| No problem. I didn't take the original comment too
| seriously either. Just a passing chuckle at some
| wordplay.
|
| TBH, I haven't heard the complaints about the use of
| "oil" in that context.
| OJFord wrote:
| GP isn't saying people _do_ complain about oil, they 're
| saying by the same logic people _ought_ to, if they wish
| to be consistent, which seems silly.
| chabska wrote:
| > humans never ate until within the last ~50 years
|
| Humans have been eating some of these for thousands of
| years. I know "extract" is a scary big scientific word, but
| most of the time it's just immersing the grain in hot
| water, strain it to remove the pulp, then boiling the
| liquid to concentrate it. You can separate the starch and
| protein from any bean or grain in your kitchen with some
| basic kitchen equipment and hot water.
| oblio wrote:
| The dose makes the poison.
|
| People weren't doing that at a mass scale before people
| figured out they could make money by increasing
| addictiveness, once technology was good enough.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| That could be mostly true of some things like the
| starches, but with the caveat that the industrial
| processes used today aren't always the same as what was
| done traditionally or what I might do in my kitchen, and
| often involve new/synthetic/potentially toxic compounds.
|
| Pea starch might be the most benign of all of these. I'm
| not making an argument that pea starch is bad either,
| just that it's not quite the same as peas, and isn't
| quite the same as home-made pea starch, and we don't
| really know if this is a problem.
|
| For example, with pea starch, they use defoaming agents
| like siloxanes, as well as sulfur dioxide, sodium
| hydroxide, and others. And, because it's a concentrate of
| just part of the plant, you might get a heavier dose of
| pesticides or heavy metals depending on what part of the
| plant these bind with. (Sure, if you eat equal portions
| of each part of the plant, extracted, this factor would
| balance out.)
|
| There's a spectrum of course with these things. Some
| things like refined oils might be far more harmful than
| the extracted starches based on the chemistry I've looked
| into. I'm not particularly afraid of pea starch but I
| just don't buy or eat processed food generally unless I'm
| in a pinch.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > every one of these is an industrially
| processed/extracted/refined ingredient that humans never
| ate until within the last ~50 years
|
| what absurd scaremongering! Do you know how yellow pea
| protein, for example, is "refined"?
|
| You take dried peas and grind them into powder. Pop in a
| centrifuge to separate protein from starch. Not exactly
| pumped full of "toxins"!
|
| > Avocado Oil
|
| You literally press avocado flesh. It's been done for
| centuries. It's not some crazy refinement process.
|
| > brown rice protein
|
| This is just ground up rice mixed with amylase or protease
| to isolate the proteins. There's nothing scary here. We've
| been eating it for millennia.
|
| etc
| lithocarpus wrote:
| Study Finds 82 Percent of Avocado Oil Rancid or Mixed
| With Other Oils
|
| https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-
| avo...
|
| "In three cases, bottles labeled as "pure" or "extra
| virgin" avocado oil contained near 100 percent soybean
| oil"
|
| You don't necessarily know what you are getting when you
| buy a processed ingredient, and there are huge financial
| incentives to not sell a top quality product when you can
| substitute other things or use cheaper processes to make
| it.
|
| Some portion of avocado oil sold today is refined with
| hexane, heated during the refining process, and likely
| heavily oxidized before consumption. (This is evidenced
| by the above paper, oxidized = rancid, and it's not a
| binary either/or there is a spectrum of how
| oxidized/rancid a fat can be.)
|
| If I see "avocado oil" as an ingredient, sure it could be
| simply pressed avocado flesh. But it could also be a
| rancid hexane-refined oil potentially cut with other
| stuff, and I'd bet that's more likely because it's
| probably a lot cheaper for the manufacturer.
|
| I don't know as much about how the starches and proteins
| are extracted, I'd bet it's more benign, but there are
| added chemicals - even if they are considered safe, it's
| still not quite the same as eating actual peas and rice.
| eeixlk wrote:
| Huh.
| thesis wrote:
| FYI most beyond burgers have more in sodium not less and
| beyond uses coconut oil which is still fairly high in
| saturated fat.
|
| If those 2 things are your barometer for healthy... it's not
| a clear win.
| ehnto wrote:
| I'm a bit of a fence sitter so I might actually be their
| target market. Very athletic, a bit health concious but not
| crazy about it in regards to diet. If I am eating out,
| usually my macros are not a big part of decision making. If
| there is a meatless option that might actually be good for a
| bit of a fibre boost, considering all the other protein I am
| intaking.
|
| It's important to remember also that not athletic individuals
| are high achieving bodybuilders with super strict macro
| diets. Most other sports only require a moderate attention to
| diet, especially at an amateur level. Bodybuilding is very
| diet focused, rather than strength and skill focused.
| eeixlk wrote:
| Like all burgers this is a high protein, low fiber food
| option. It probably has more in common with your protein
| shake, being high in pea and other proteins but also has a
| high amount of sodium. This is a splurge food like any
| burger is. If you are looking for fiber, vegetables have
| them. Also impossible burgers taste better as they smell
| like coconuts instead of peas when they are cooked.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over
| hamburgers.
|
| I seriously doubt that health-conscious people would pick
| hyper-processed plants that are meant to resemble meat over
| plain meat+bread+vegetables that make up a non-fast-food
| hamburger.
| rcakebread wrote:
| "they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than your average
| hamburger patty"
|
| If you buy a Beyond patty, it has way more sodium than ground
| beef you'd buy at a grocerty store. Comparing it with a fast
| food burger isn't really fair.
| kulahan wrote:
| Not really - every single Burger King out there sells the
| beyond burger as far as I've seen.
| messe wrote:
| If they're selling in a supermarket, it's more than fair
| to compare them to those offerings.
|
| Who's buying Burger King more than grocery shopping?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I've eaten maybe 5 burgers at home in my 35 years but
| I've eaten plenty more at fast food restaurants.
| messe wrote:
| And I've eaten far more at home than out in my 29. It's
| really not that common to eat out that often where I
| live.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| That's fine.
|
| You asked "Who's buying Burger King more than grocery
| shopping?"
|
| My point was that groceries in general don't matter, only
| burgers. Some people almost never eat burgers at home and
| eat them exclusively at places like Burger King.
| messe wrote:
| That's a fair point.
| gowld wrote:
| Burger King sells Impossible, not Beyond.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| I've never eaten a beyond burger or anything like that at
| home. At home the improvement in flavour over tofu or just
| beans isn't worth it. I can get flavour from herbs spices
| and other ingredients. I've only ever eaten beyond burgers
| at restaurants.
| carlmr wrote:
| >it has way more sodium than ground beef you'd buy at a
| grocerty store
|
| We're not comparing fairly here. A finished hamburger patty
| is not pure ground beef. Did you ever make a hamburger
| patty yourself? You add salt and spices at a minimum.
|
| A more fair comparison would be looking at store-bought
| hamburger patties. That's the same category of food.
|
| I just compared Beyond (0.75g salt per 100g) and block
| house American Burger (0.88g per 100g). The patties are
| somewhat similar in weight, too (113g and 125g). So both in
| absolute, and weight relative amounts the Beyond burger has
| less sodium.
| iinnPP wrote:
| You don't need salt and spices to make a burger, it can
| be 100% beef with no additives. A pinch of salt can be
| like 0.3g/burger and you're fine as well.
|
| I don't eat that these days, my burgers are actually 25%
| beef and 75% lentil/seasoning. Still under 0.5g/100g
| kleiba wrote:
| Let me assure you that you're in the vast minority if you
| add little or no salt at all to your home-made burger
| patties.
| Jensson wrote:
| Still meat is very low sodium, it is weird to say plant
| based alternatives have less sodium since both have as
| much salt as you add since there is almost none
| naturally.
| kleiba wrote:
| But then you're comparing apples an oranges: meat is low
| in sodium in its unprocessed form, but so are all the
| ingredients of the plant-based alternative _before adding
| salt_.
|
| What matters is not so much the natural form, it is how
| the product is typically consumed.
|
| But of course I see your point that with home made meat-
| based patties, you are in control of how much salt you
| want to add, while with factory made patties, you have to
| take what you get, it's typically not possible to "take
| away" salt. Mind you, though, the latter argument holds
| for both plant-based and meat-based factory-made patties.
| iinnPP wrote:
| Beyond sells a ground beef substitute which has about 3x
| as much sodium as lean ground beef.
| kleiba wrote:
| Did you get the point about how you usually season meat
| (with salt) before you eat it? Beyond Beef has 230mg of
| sodium per 100g (according to their website), even a
| pinch of salt you add for seasoning easily contains 10x
| that amount.
|
| Also, do you expect the vegan alternative to have exactly
| the same nutritional values as their meat counterparts?
|
| Look, I don't even know why I'm defending Beyond here,
| I'm certainly not a fan (as a matter of fact, I don't
| like their beef patties). But I think the arguments
| you've made are not entirely fair.
| iinnPP wrote:
| The sodium content is about 3x higher. It doesn't taste
| 3x higher.
|
| If you're salting your recipe with traditional ground
| beef, you're doing the same with Beyond. If not, same.
|
| I do not expect or even encourage the content of any
| alternative to match the nutritional value of the real
| deal.
|
| A typical pinch of salt is 300mg. Not 2300mg.
|
| When the base product has 3x as much sodium, that is a
| problem. It doesn't need that much because as you stated,
| you can add salt during cooking. As a great example,
| let's take a use case for Beyond which is taco meat. I
| add taco seasoning (my own which is about 30% sodium
| compared to a traditional) and now the Beyond version is
| still roughly 250% the sodium content.
|
| I can't remove the sodium they add. It's not a product I
| like or desire. It's more expensive. It's less healthy
| (note how often I mention reduced salt) for myself.
|
| Also, I have been a strict vegan in life for about 5
| years. I still didn't eat Beyond (aside from tasting it)
| during that period (it was available).
|
| I'm not really trying to attack Beyond here, it's all
| personal preference at the end of the day. I make 95% of
| my food, from bread to tomato sauce to pickled peppers
| and hot sauce. When I am reaching for a vegan protein, I
| reach for lentils.
| kleiba wrote:
| Yes, sorry, you're right - I made a mistake looking up
| how much salt is in a pinch.
| butlike wrote:
| The difference is you CAN'T get Beyond meat to make
| patties without preservative-levels of sodium. You CAN
| get ground beef and make patties without preservative-
| levels of sodium.
| iinnPP wrote:
| I was going to edit the comment with this but in Canada
| we have a company called Metro(grocer) and they often
| sell 4x fresh beef patties for ~$4 which is 1lb(454g) of
| ground beef and exactly nothing else.
|
| It's good to eat sans salt on bbq with your desired
| (typically salty) toppings.
|
| I know people salt the patty while cooking, but the topic
| at hand is Beyond and their patties.
| Arainach wrote:
| ....which should be compared against other premade
| patties and how people make and serve beef patties, not
| against the theoretical option that people could choose
| to omit salt.
|
| The whole "salt" angle is bikeshedding - no one advocated
| Beyond for salt, they pick it for all of the other health
| benefits (fats, cholesterol)
| iinnPP wrote:
| Salt, among the ingredients in the average burger is the
| most likely to cause you problems. Calling it
| bikeshedding is a massive stretch. In a talk of the
| importance of the contents of your diet related only to
| burgers, salt is the exact opposite of bikeshedding.
|
| Nothing whatsoever is stopping Beyond from removing salt
| and allowing people to salt their own burgers, as they
| already do.
| Arainach wrote:
| The contribution of salt in hypertension and other issues
| is overblown in popular media.
|
| I'm on blood pressure meds. I regularly check in with
| doctors on things. No, you shouldn't be eating unlimited
| salt, but sugar and cholesterol are killing (and
| debilitating) many more of us.
| iinnPP wrote:
| I avoided needing medicine by altering my diet to tone
| down salt, unhealthy fat, and sugar intake. My doctor was
| surprised as "everyone just takes the meds."
| edgyquant wrote:
| The GP is talking about health conscious folks
| gravatron wrote:
| I remember working in a restaurant many years ago, where
| it was part of new hire training to demonstrate the
| importance of salt and pepper to a burger's taste. We
| would make 3 burgers, one no seasoning, one poorly
| seasoned, and one properly seasoned to the spec, and then
| we would taste test them all. The difference in taste was
| so night and day I was shocked the first time I
| participated in the test. Yeah I guess you don't
| technically need salt and spices, but not adding them or
| using just a pinch is not the same thing at all.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I have made burgers hundreds if not thousands of times
| and I have never done more than roll ground beef into a
| ball ans squish it flat. Salt and spices are completely
| unnecessarily, who am I, Gordon Ramsey? Sliced onion on
| top of the patty does plenty of work.
| eeixlk wrote:
| You are comparing a prepared product to a raw ingredient.
| Raw beef is pretty boring which is why every single
| restaurant add some combination of salt, pepper, mayo,
| ketchup, mustard, oil, butter, gochujang, etc to make it
| into food. If you want to convince the world to eat
| unseasoned beef and onion burgers be my guest but you
| have a tougher hill to climb than the vegetarians. Eat
| what makes you happy, but maybe acknowledge it's not
| actual cooking.
| Intermernet wrote:
| You can make an awesome burger pattie with beef, onion,
| garlic, a touch of finely chopped jalapeno and some herbs
| and spices etc. You don't need to add salt.
| deepvibrations wrote:
| Yes, and I can make a vegan burger from lentils, onion,
| garlic and a touch of finely chopped jalapino, herbs etc.
|
| The comparison here is shop-bought burgers or those you
| would buy in a burger restaurant, which WILL have salt
| and likely more than a Beyond burger.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Why is that the comparison being made?
| ben_w wrote:
| I believe the claim being made here is that "a beyond
| burger" is a thing which fast food chains and
| supermarkets will offer as an alternative to "a beef
| burger", that almost nobody will make their own burgers.
|
| I have no opinion about the economics of the brand
| itself; as a vegetarian I've always thought they were
| over-priced, and also that it was a shame I don't have a
| huge range of alternatives, as I actually like spicy bean
| burgers and can't find them any more*. In fact, because
| of the limited alternatives in my local markets, I got a
| kit for making my own burgers from dehydrated soy mince
| and/or mashed kidney beans.
|
| * I don't know how much of this is "bean burgers are no
| longer popular" vs. "I moved country and Berlin has never
| heard of them"; for Quorn I do at least know it's the
| latter.
| carlmr wrote:
| > I got a kit for making my own burgers from dehydrated
| soy mince and/or mashed kidney beans.
|
| Do you have a link or name for this? I also prefer black
| bean or lentil burgers, but I've been making them by hand
| really.
| ben_w wrote:
| One of these, found in the discount bin in a nearby
| supermarket for about EUR10-20:
| https://www.discounto.de/Angebot/BESTRON-Hamburger-Maker-
| AMH...
|
| There's probably also a cheaper source for the form and
| squasher if that's all you need, but it came with them so
| I didn't look for that separately.
| deepvibrations wrote:
| People who make their own burgers will always make
| healthy burgers, whether meat or vegan.
|
| People who buy burgers or eat out are likely to get less
| healthy burgers, if you look at highest selling
| supermarket burgers, both meat and vegan options are ALL
| high in salt for example.
| blks wrote:
| Because beyond meat is junk food, whether it's sold in
| supermarkets or restaurants.
| malfist wrote:
| Maybe awesome to you, but many people will find that
| exact same construction more flavorful if salt is added
| behringer wrote:
| Yes but that would make it "unhealthy" for many
| Americans. So for the health-conscious eater, the real
| hamburger wins.
| malfist wrote:
| Salt is not a health concern unless you specifically have
| a specific subset of cardiac health problems.
|
| The vast, vast, vast majority of people do not have any
| reason to restrict salt intake.
| behringer wrote:
| 47 percent of adults in the US suffer from hypertension:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12196499/
| krsw wrote:
| which is much more easily explained by a garbage diet, no
| preventative medicine so to speak of, obesity,
| work/family/financial stress. there is a lot of space
| between 2100 mg of sodium for a 3 piece chicken w/ fries,
| and ~150 mg to put a little life into a patty.
| littlexsparkee wrote:
| High salt increases likelihood of kidney stones
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| And high water increases likelihood of electrocution. And
| very high water increases likelihood of finding yourself
| with a wet T-shirt.
|
| "Increases likelihood" is bullshit at best (manipulation
| more typically) without quantifying _how much_ , and _how
| much would it need to be to be remotely significant_.
| butlike wrote:
| But you're arguing something different now. Regardless of
| subjective opinion, the bottom line is salt IS optional.
| cj wrote:
| This whole thread is talking about BeyondMeat burgers.
|
| If you're comparing the healthiness of a premade vegan
| burger patty, you need to compare it to a premade (or
| equivalent homemmade) beef patty. You can't take salt out
| of the beef patty comparison and say "look it's better"
|
| Edit: But you can compare it to actual products on
| shelves. The first frozen burger brand I can think of
| that would be a good comparison is frozen Bubba burger.
| If we compare the sodium content, Beyond patty is 3-4x
| higher in sodium. Beef wins! :) Although Beyond has half
| the fat.
| neutronicus wrote:
| It's also good for the texture if you let if rest in the
| fridge for a couple hours before cooking.
| krsw wrote:
| You absolutely need salt for a good burger. It is
| fundamental seasoning in every savoury dish at every
| restaurant (fast or fine) for a reason.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| You may have a salt deficiency
| array_key_first wrote:
| You absolutely need salt for a good burger, and just
| about any meat. Almost anything, really. Salt is not
| optional. Beef tastes less like beef without salt.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| It means one patty has around 45% of the optimal
| recommended sodium intake and 30% of the max
| recommendation.
|
| https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-
| eating/eat-s...
| mcdonje wrote:
| You're comparing a burger patty to a burger ingredient. Two
| different things. Not a reasonable comparison.
| iinnPP wrote:
| A burger can be made from that solitary ingredient
| though.
| eeixlk wrote:
| soy?
| ben_w wrote:
| Pure soy doesn't taste too good in my experience. I tend
| to prep the dehydrated stuff I get with (ironically) soy
| sauce, which is quite salty, plus whatever else the
| recipe I'm using the soy in calls for. In the case of soy
| burgers, that mince needs some binding agent.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| It's odd, as I generally agree that "pure soya" doesn't
| taste that great, but I do prefer the taste of edamame
| beans which are just young soybeans. Products like tofu
| generally need more flavour adding to it - and I
| personally like tofu and eat it fairly regularly, so I'm
| not biased against it.
|
| Also, I like the taste of Natto (soybeans fermented in
| straw) though that's generally thought of as an acquired
| taste.
| mcdonje wrote:
| I think that's rather uncommon. The closest I've seen is
| someone smashing down some ground beef then putting salt
| and pepper on it before cooking.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| "Loaded with sodium" is what the agrolobby wants you to
| think. If you knew what goes into supermarket burger
| patties I guarantee you would never want to touch them ever
| again. Look up nitrates for starter, which is used as a
| preservative in some meat products: burgers, hotdogs, cold
| cuts.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Ground beef from the butcher does not have nitrates
| deepvibrations wrote:
| In my opinion, there are two options for each group:
|
| Meat: 1. Those who buy from butcher (health conscious) 2.
| Those who buy packaged products from supermarket.
|
| Vegan: 1. Those who make homemade plant-based
| alternatives (eg.lentil burgers) 2. Those who buy Beyond
| burgers from supermarket.
|
| Hence I think most people are trying to compare apples to
| oranges, which is not the correct comparison to make when
| weighing up each type.
| mrkstu wrote:
| I think a lot of those here are likely warehouse club
| buyers- Costco doesn't add anything to their ground beef
| or frozen patties. Sams 'seasons' some of their patties,
| but no nitrates.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| https://bubbafoods.com/nutrition/bubba-angus-beef-2lb/
|
| Ingredients: beef
|
| https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/products/the-beyond-
| burger
|
| Ingredients: a bunch
| gowld wrote:
| Beef is a bunch of ingredients mixed together by a a cow.
| barrell wrote:
| This is such a weird comment.
|
| It's ultra processed food devoid of micronutrients with low
| quality protein and poor bioavailability.
|
| Health conscious folks would definitely not choose this. In
| fact, it's all the things you try to avoid as soon as you
| start being health conscious. Folks who want to believe they
| are being health conscious may be convinced via marketing to
| buy it, but anyone seriously invested in their nutrition
| would steer very clear of these.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Maybe they're hoping there exists a non-crazy subset of
| "health conscious" population, i.e. people who are not
| panicly afraid of "ultra processed" food and generally
| don't consider food processing to be a sin, who don't see
| food manufacturing plants as temples of Satan, and are
| otherwise _health_ conscious and not just playing the
| fitness fad social games.
| rdn wrote:
| They must be panicly afraid of salt and saturated fat
| instead then, since that was OP's argument for "health
| conscious". Yet still insist on a simulacrum of a burger,
| instead of having a chicken breast.
|
| This product will only succeed if its reasonably cheaper
| than the cheapest meat (not just beef). It is and forever
| will be inferior to meat as a food product for the vast
| majority of consumers. Perhaps in some vision of the
| future the dominant consumer is Hindu and they may find
| the product acceptable, but they'll still be price
| conscious.
| oblio wrote:
| Ultra processed foods are tied with a myriad of health
| conditions.
|
| https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-
| maga...
|
| Please tell the British Heart Foundation that they're
| "the crazy kind of health conscious" :-)
| Marha01 wrote:
| From your source:
|
| > Ultra-processed foods: Ultra-processed foods typically
| have more than 1 ingredient that you never or rarely find
| in a kitchen. They also tend to include many additives
| and ingredients that are not typically used in home
| cooking, such as preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners,
| and artificial colours and flavours. These foods
| generally have a long shelf life.
|
| Are there ingredients actually in the Beyond burger?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Also:
|
| > _many additives and ingredients that are not typically
| used in home cooking, such as preservatives, emulsifiers_
|
| Since when? _Salt_ is a highly effective preservative,
| _egg yolk_ is a powerful emulsifier, and they 're largely
| used _for those exact purposes_.
|
| The amount of bullshit in "healthy eating" and fitness
| fad space never ceases to amaze me.
| oblio wrote:
| Is that comment trying to be intentionally dense? They're
| talking about E123 & co, synthetic ones.
| adrian_b wrote:
| There are different classes of food processing, with very
| different properties.
|
| The kinds of food processing methods that remove from raw
| food the parts that are unhealthy or undesirable cannot
| have in principle any kind of harmful effect, when the
| processed food is used correctly. They may have only an
| indirect harmful effect because the availability of pure
| food ingredients may enable some people to use such
| processed food in an incorrect way, by making food that
| has an unbalanced composition, for instance food that has
| too much sugar.
|
| On the other hand, the food processing methods that cause
| irreversible transformations of food, i.e. mixing various
| ingredients and/or using certain food treatments, e.g.
| heating, are quite likely to have harmful effects on food
| quality, when they are done in an industrial setting,
| instead of being done at home. The reason is that an
| industrial producer has very different incentives than
| those who cook for their family, for friends or
| relatives, or at least for some loyal customers who
| appreciate good food. An industrial producer cares only
| for the appearance and taste of the food, and for its
| production cost. So any useless or even harmful
| ingredients will be used if those reduce the production
| cost, as long as the food still looks appetizing and it
| has a good taste provided e.g. by excessive sugar, salt
| and bad quality fat.
|
| So the problem is less that food processing methods are
| bad per se. The problem is that most producers of
| processed food cannot be trusted to use processing
| methods that are good for the customer, instead of being
| good only for the producer. Now there are a lot of
| regulations that prevent some of the most harmful methods
| of food adulteration that were used in the past, but they
| are still not severe enough to ensure that every producer
| makes healthy food.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _The reason is that an industrial producer has very
| different incentives than those who cook for their
| family, for friends or relatives, or at least for some
| loyal customers who appreciate good food. An industrial
| producer cares only for the appearance and taste of the
| food, and for its production cost._
|
| Now I'm not denying industrial players have a different
| set of incentives than people cooking for themselves, but
| it's not all evil either. They also care about appeasing
| regulators in countries where food regulations exist, and
| they may care a bit personally since they themselves
| and/or their family is eating that too, so I wouldn't
| necessarily paint them as completely disconnected from
| the rest of society.
|
| Now, on the other hand, the industrial producers have a
| few more things going in their favor, such as they
| _actually have quality control metrics_ , and they are in
| actual position to make good on caring about food. Home
| kitchens are not, regular people have neither knowledge
| nor appreciation of the complex chemistry involved, and
| even if they did, the equipment used in home kitchens is
| too crude to allow for consistent quality (not that we
| can hope for any with no supply chain control either).
|
| (The slightly-fancy restaurants are arguably the worst -
| they combine all the bad incentives of a high-volume,
| low-margin commercial operation, with equipment and setup
| inadequate to guarantee any kind of process quality
| control. Contrast that with e.g. McDonald's - they may be
| serving mediocre food at best, but they do it with
| engineering precision, and you can be sure they aren't
| just microwaving you an old chicken breast and adding
| burn marks with an electric grill to make it look like
| you'd expect for a $50 menu item with a name written in
| French.)
|
| So the irony is, the industrial producers may have
| misaligned incentives, but they're also the only ones in
| position to deliver _actually_ healthy and quality food.
| Regular people have neither knowledge nor equipment for
| that, and all the "healthy eating" fads abusing real
| scientific terms and imbuing them with quasi-religious
| meaning is not helping. In reality, people just eat stuff
| and make up stories they don't even verify to feel good
| with their choices. Which, like with other such belief
| systems, is fine, until they believe their own stories so
| much they try to force others to believe in them too.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > people who are not panicly afraid of "ultra processed"
| food and generally don't consider food processing to be a
| sin
|
| If you're not you should, colon cancer is becoming a
| leading cause of death in people under 40...
|
| https://www.cancerresearch.org/blog/colorectal-cancer-
| awaren...
|
| https://images.newscientist.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/03/0...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Listing "risk factors" without quantifying them is
| useless waste of readers' time, but even then, "diet" is
| only one of _eight_ listed, with three others being the
| obvious ones - alcohol, smoking, and low physical
| activity /obesity (arguably those should be two separate
| ones).
|
| -
|
| The chart you linked only talks about incidence ratio,
| and is more than adequately explained by improvements in
| access to tests, quality of tests, as well as
| improvements in healthcare in general, as people don't
| suffer and die today from what they did up to few decades
| ago - or anything else, really, since the world has been
| steadily improving across the board in every dimension.
|
| In fact, non-linear effects of population growth _alone_
| could explain that chart: people _talk more_ , including
| about colon cancer, so over time, more people in the
| population with access to testing would go test
| themselves after being made aware of the potential
| problem, biasing the sample.
|
| Or, more fundamentally, the fact that medicine graduated
| from voodoo to proper science only around 100 years ago,
| would explain it too, because we're less than a century
| into doing proper studies about anything at all.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Strange, every single source I can find blame diets and
| lifestyles, but you might be right and everyone else is
| wrong, we just "talk more about it"... you have a good
| source of copium my friend
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's easy to blame diets and lifestyles because you don't
| have to be specific, and if reality disagrees with your
| hypothesis, you can claim the victim didn't hold their
| lifestyle or diet right. Diet/exercise are the ultimate
| "fuck off" advice.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It's easy to blame diets and lifestyles because you
| don't have to be specific
|
| It's extremely specific actually: obesity, smoked meat,
| red meat, alcohol, cigarettes, high sugar, low fibers,
| nitrites and a shit loads of additives that are banned in
| the EU but not in the US.
|
| > Diet/exercise are the ultimate "fuck off" advice.
|
| No, it's a every simple and actionable advice actually,
| you can reduce your chances of cancer by 50-75% by "diet
| and exercise"
|
| > if reality disagrees with your hypothesis
|
| It does not disagree with "my" hypothesis (which is the
| universal consensus btw)
|
| > you can claim the victim didn't hold their lifestyle or
| diet right
|
| It's your life, do as you please, you're a big boy,
| you'll be the only one paying the price ultimately. I
| don't exercise and eat clean because it makes me
| invincible, I do it because it makes me feel better,
| improve my odds at pretty much everything in life and
| increase my health span dramatically, even if I die of
| cancer next month I am already benefiting from my actions
| every single day.
|
| > tobacco, diet, infection, obesity, and other factors
| contribute approximately 25-30%, 30-35%, 15-20%, 10-20%,
| and 10-15%, respectively, to the incidence of all cancer
| deaths in the USA
|
| researchgate.net/publication/5225070_Cancer_is_a_Preventa
| ble_Disease_that_Requires_Major_Lifestyle_Changes?_tp=eyJ
| jb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6Il9kaXJlY3QiLCJwYWdlIjoiX2Rp
| cmVjdCJ9fQ
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Cancers-that-have-
| been-l...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-role-of-genes-
| and-en...
| lkbm wrote:
| Note that the risk factor of diet in your chose to
| highlight exactly one food to avoid: red meat.
|
| Yeah, you should probably eat more low-processed foods
| like veggies, but the Beyond Burger is used as a
| replacement for beef, not for carrots.
| barrell wrote:
| I haven't been eating processed foods for several decades
| now. Just because it's trendy at the moment doesn't make
| it wrong, nor does it make those who abstrain game
| players.
|
| I would say veganism is more trendy at the moment. That
| doesnt discredit anything about the vegan diet.
| billynomates wrote:
| Health conscious ethical vegan here. I eat these fairly
| often. The protein content is fine. I get micronutrients
| from other sources. I track all my calories and macros,
| every single day. My diet is perfectly balanced, thanks
| very much.
|
| Something is only unhealthy or healthy in light of
| everything else you eat. It's reductive to say otherwise.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Health conscious vege here, I'd never touch these things
| with a 10 ft pole when I can make a bean patty burger or
| halloumi burger for 50% of the price and 300% of the
| flavor
| PxldLtd wrote:
| I love just blitzing oats, carrots, onions as a base and
| then throwing in anything else like kidney beans or
| courgettes. Makes great veggie burgers you can just cook
| in the oven. Takes no time at all and less effort to cook
| than a beefburger.
| barrell wrote:
| Thank you. Bean burgers are delicious. I don't eat them
| as part of my normal diet, but have no qualms with them
| and could always share a meal with my vegan friends.
|
| Nowadays it's all fake meat products which I would never
| put in my body, and there's this weird social pressure
| where I'm being silly by "refusing to eat vegan foods".
|
| Fruits and vegetables and legumes are delicious, I will
| eat all of them.
|
| Bring back bean burgers!
| close04 wrote:
| > I get micronutrients from other sources
|
| Looks like agree that it's not great but you compensate
| elsewhere. If you chose the "hard way" of limiting your
| menu to vegan why not pick the options with less
| compromises? Even paper can be food as long as you
| compensate elsewhere.
|
| > Something is only unhealthy or healthy in light of
| everything else you eat. It's reductive to say otherwise.
|
| Are you maybe conflating "unhealthy" with "not explicitly
| healthy"? Plenty of foods are unequivocally unhealthy,
| anything else you eat will not compensate. You don't
| "compensate" for eating a lot of ultraprocessed food
| because some of the contents of that food should not be
| in your body at all. You can't always "subtract" by
| eating other food. Not saying this is the case for you
| and these burgers.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Man, putting a burger between two pieces of bread with
| onion, lettuce, tomato and pickle isn't _compensating
| elsewhere_
| close04 wrote:
| That's not what I meant. If you eat extra "crap" (salt,
| sugar, fat, palm oil, coloring, additives, etc.) in one
| food you can't always balance it out with another food.
| It's not all like counting calories, only care about the
| total because some things you shouldn't eat in any
| measurable quantity.
|
| And if I make the effort of eating vegan also for health
| reasons, why would I go for the ultraprocessed vegan
| option? To be clear, I wasn't talking about this
| particular burger, just the general logic that "this food
| is fine because I can get what I actually need elsewhere"
| and that "healthy/unhealthy is relative to what else you
| eat". It's not, some things are objectively unhealthy and
| there's no option to eat something else to "balance" it.
| Avshalom wrote:
| I mean arsenic is objectively unhealthy. None of the
| other things in your parenthetical are
| lkbm wrote:
| What micronutrients are you getting from ground beef that
| Beyond burgers don't have?
| ap99 wrote:
| I'm probably similar to you re: diet, but...
|
| If I eat perfectly clean for 90% of my diet and then I
| consume poison for the remaining 10%, that's still doing
| some damage.
|
| You can, however, be happy with the fact that 10% is
| better than 50%.
| eeixlk wrote:
| Pea protein, avocado oil, brown rice protein and red
| lentil protein is poison now?
| landl0rd wrote:
| Health conscious drinker here. I have a double bourbon
| every few weeks. My diet is perfectly balanced. Alcohol
| still is not healthy and the rest of my diet has
| absolutely zero to do with that. _I_ am healthy in light
| of everything else I eat; any individual item is still
| healthy or not.
|
| Yes, some harms aren't linear no-threshold in their
| nature. Doesn't change the fact that the unhealthy
| doesn't become healthy because you eat a salad for lunch.
| lkbm wrote:
| Same. I don't see a lot of micronutrients in ground beef
| that the Beyond patty doesn't have. You usually don't
| choose meat for the vitamins.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| However you do realize "ultra processing" here means
| mechanically separating whole peas to get the protein part?
| Not trying to correct you or make your point invalid just
| flagging "processing" is not the scary thing agro lobby
| trying to make it, in this case. In fact they probably got
| super scared of meat alternatives and did everything in
| their power to make it go away.
|
| Beyond meat doesn't have nitrates, filler, stabilizers or
| "85% meat" hence it's way more healthy than most meat-based
| patties or meat products.
|
| Again, agrolobby by its full-page ads in newspapers
| successfully turned plant-based food which is objectively,
| scientifically proven to be healthy, to something
| unnatural, "chemical" and unhealthy.
| barrell wrote:
| There are a lot of people who _thrive_ off of a 100% beef
| diet, I don't think there is anyone who could _survive_
| off of 100% beyond meat burgers. I don't think you can
| say they are way healthier than beef by any stretch of
| the imagination.
|
| And to extract pure protein from a pea is exactly what I
| would consider ultra-processed. The checmicals used to
| separate the protein from the pea are included in the
| final product. At its purest, you're at least drenching
| it in HCl. At its worst, it's being soaked with who knows
| what.
|
| Sure maybe it's cleaned well enough to "not matter" but I
| think it's perfectly reasonable to find that a concern
| and not want to consume it.
|
| And that's just pea protein, I don't even want to know
| the aggregate of all the ingredients and manufacturing
| process of the "patties".
| ricardobayes wrote:
| See that's the same thought the agrolobby used to
| weaponize "chemical-sounding", scary names. HCl is the
| same your stomach uses to digest food and used in making
| e.g. "organic" sea salt.
|
| I see the same argument very often these days: that only
| single-ingredient, "traditional" food is good.
| barrell wrote:
| What is this about "the agrolobby"? I haven't eaten
| processed foods in decades. I started when I was a kid
| because I didn't like eating things where I didn't know
| all the ingredients. Not from marketing or lobbying or
| trends. I just stopped eating processed foods, felt
| better, and now if I eat any processed foods I get ill,
| so I don't eat them.
|
| I don't know anyone who doesn't eat processed foods
| because of marketing or advertising or lobbying they've
| been exposed to. There is a solid rational to eat whole
| foods, and anyone I know who does not eat processed foods
| does it because they'd rather eat whole foods.
|
| There is a ton of research to suggest processed foods are
| safe to eat. One could also make the argument these are
| all funded by their own lobbying groups. The truth of the
| matter is nutrition is complicated, there is likely more
| than one answer, and we definitely do not know them.
|
| Not everyone who disagreed has been swindled by some
| corporation.
|
| HCl is toxic when ingested btw. The fact it is in your
| body does not mean it's safe to consume.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| My point was there is very much this kind of "whispering
| propaganda" when it came to vegan food, labeling it as
| unhealthy, "processed" and full of chemicals. Most of it
| was and is done by the "agrolobby", sometimes subtly,
| sometimes not, e.g. through full-page ads in the NYT,
| laying out scary-sounding chemical ingredients. The
| agriculture sector collectively shat its pants when
| something came along for the first time in centuries that
| could even slightly change consumer habits.
| barrell wrote:
| This is not contending with the health aspects of it
| though. It is highly processed and it uses a bunch of
| toxic chemicals to make it, regardless of what any
| lobbying groups say.
| samiv wrote:
| These are the people who argue that soymilk and seed oils
| are healthy. Even if they're processed with using
| solvents such as hexane and stuff it's just processing,
| right? Your also "processing" when you peal your
| potatoes. Same thing !
|
| /s
| kakacik wrote:
| This is such a weird comment.
|
| I have friend who was vegan for 20 years, and when we went to
| good restaurant and he wanted to choose between vegan patty
| burger and real one, he chose real one due to all chemical
| industrial crap they put in those veggie patties and chose a
| good Swiss beef instead of questionable worse-tasting
| content. Yes, he literally stopped being vegan at that point,
| although he still is on most days since then.
|
| Its subpar product, with way too much questionable chemistry,
| worse taste (or more like structure&taste) and impact on
| environment is... questionable too, maybe less than real beef
| but probably not massively. What could be acceptable for
| environmental impact is lab grown real meat but even that
| seems to not go the direction one would expect.
| shafyy wrote:
| > _I have friend who was vegan for 20 years, and when we
| went to good restaurant and he wanted to choose between
| vegan patty burger and real one, he chose real one due to
| all chemical industrial crap they put in those veggie
| patties and chose a good Swiss beef instead of questionable
| worse-tasting content_
|
| So, he wasn't vegan then?
| sarreph wrote:
| You did such a good job of listing out reasons why niche
| demographics would skip a meat-free burger, without listing
| the actual core demographic who consumes them: Vegans and
| vegetarians, i.e. people who enjoy eating burgers but don't
| eat meat.
| dcminter wrote:
| Their second paragraph addresses this.
| sarreph wrote:
| "Health conscious" !== vegan, vegetarian
| dcminter wrote:
| That's the third paragraph.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over
| hamburgers
|
| Why? Carbs and processed oils bound together by stodge isn't
| healthier than fried ground beef.
| amelius wrote:
| But soy products contain high amounts of phytoestrogens.
| mhl47 wrote:
| Most beyond products I know don't even contain soy as
| protein source.
|
| Regardless of what you think about phytooestrogens (which
| has very little evidence to have negative effects in normal
| quantities)
| amelius wrote:
| You're right, they contain yellow peas. But ... these are
| also rich in phytoestrogens.
|
| (It is also an Asian crop, originally, maybe that has
| something to do with Western people, especially men, not
| being very well tolerant to it)
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| > Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over
| hamburgers.
|
| I don't know man. I'm a health conscious person and I could
| just as easily choose normal chicken meat, or a beef steak
| that's not a hamburger, or fatty fish (omega-3!!). Why would
| I choose a hamburger substitute? I don't even particularly
| crave hamburgers.
|
| I took a look at the ingredients list of the Dutch version,
| and it seems to be okay when it comes to amount of industrial
| fillers. It seems the preservative (potassium lactate) is the
| only problem, everything else seems acceptable. So I guess
| it's not that bad, but I still don't still really have a
| reason to choose it.
|
| On days when I don't particularly want to eat a lot of meat,
| I just eat more rice, vegetables and beans. It's not that
| hard?
|
| I think the OP is right: their niche seemed to be people who
| crave something like a hamburger or at least real meat while
| having an ideological opposition against meat and enough
| money.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Trying to avoid Mad Cow disease from ground meat is a thing
| too.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| a bubba burger (grocery store frozen burger) has 90mg sodium
| (https://bubbafoods.com/nutrition/bubba-angus-beef-2lb/)
|
| a beyond burger has 310mg https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-
| US/products/the-beyond-burger
|
| They are lower in fat and total calories but they are
| obviously more processed = salt. Even a mcdonalds burger
| patty (without the bun) has less salt.
| malfist wrote:
| Not everyone cares about processing or salt. And like the
| OP said it's not a comparison to a bean burger that
| matters, they weren't going to chose that anyway, it's the
| comparison to real meat
| liveoneggs wrote:
| it was the first thing he called out as being healthier,
| which was factually incorrect.
|
| bubba burgers are real meat, not bean burgers
| gowld wrote:
| McDonalds quarter pounder has less salt per oz, but the Big
| Mac / basic burger patties have more salt per oz or per
| protein gram.
|
| https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-
| food/nutrition-...
| liveoneggs wrote:
| thanks for the link; here are the numbers:
|
| Basic burger without any other ingredients has 90
| calories and 160mg sodium.
|
| The quarter pounder patty alone has 220 calories and
| 210mg of sodium.
|
| Big mac patty (includes "flavoring") has 190 calories and
| 310mg sodium.
|
| Beyond patty is 230 calories with 310mg sodium.
| hbn wrote:
| > Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over
| hamburgers
|
| Not sure what health-conscious people you know, but I'd
| hazard to guess that most would choose the patty made from a
| single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human
| diet since the dawn of man over the ultra-processed slurry of
| starches and oils.
| trevorkoob wrote:
| You may have a point about processing, but I think by
| talking about "most people" you have invalidated any future
| points you may be trying to make.
|
| For example:
|
| "single natural ingredient"
|
| not every cow is only fed with grass, and what about that
| grass, has it been treated, etc...
|
| also
|
| Neu5Gc
|
| Mammal meat contains it, Humans have lost the enzyme
| (perhaps over that time since "the dawn of man"), it causes
| inflammation.
|
| Looking at chimpanzee diets, I don't think our common
| ancestor was regularly eating burgers. More likely insects
| and leaves...which do not contain Neu5Gc.
|
| As a self-proclaimed "healthy person", I'm not regularly
| eating either of these, but unless I know where the meat
| comes from, I'm likely sticking to the non-inflammatory
| burger.
| Arainach wrote:
| "natural" does not mean healthy. "Processed" does not mean
| bad.
|
| Something that feels and tastes like a reasonable
| substitute for meat but doesn't jack up my cholesterol is
| very much appreciated.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Hamburger patties are processed, I don't know who y'all are
| kidding.
|
| At the end of the day, red meat is bad for you. Processed
| red meat is in the same category as carcinogen as Alcohol
| and Tobacco. To put into perspective, diet coke is two
| categories lower. And it doesn't get much more artificial
| than that. Bacon is basically cigarettes in meat form, and
| hamburgers are just heart disease in a bun.
|
| Believe it or not, starches and oils are genuinely
| healthier than meat. Meat is basically just bad for you, or
| at least most of it.
|
| And before I hear more "dawn of man" stuff - uh, no. For
| most of human history, humans ate very little meat. It was
| mostly plants.
|
| And, of the meat they did eat, it was nothing like the meat
| we have today. We eat extremely fatty farmed meat, they ate
| lean game meat. Farmed meat is a very new invention.
|
| There is still lean meat today! Hamburgers are not it,
| though.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Hamburgers are pretty lean. The meat is "processed" by
| mixing fatty cuts with lean cuts. So it ends up leaner
| than what the fat cut would have been.
| array_key_first wrote:
| And preservatives, and antimicrobial washes.
|
| Hamburger patties are not very lean at all. 15% saturated
| fat is not lean. Lean is chicken breast or game deer.
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| Same IARC group does not equal same risk. Group 1 just
| means the evidence is strong, not that the danger is
| equivalent. Smoking increases lung cancer risk by
| 2,000-3,000%. Daily processed meat increases colorectal
| cancer risk from around 4.5% to 5%. calling bacon
| "cigarettes in meat form" is wildly misleading.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Yes, I know that, my point is we know, almost definitely,
| that processed red meat causes cancer.
|
| For many processes ingredients, like aspartame, we don't
| know. We're pretty sure it doesn't cause cancer. But from
| the way people talk about aspartame versus pastrami, you
| wouldn't know that.
|
| And I stand by what I said about bacon. It's health
| detriments are much much worse than just colorectal risk
| - it heightens your risk of almost all cancers, similar
| to tobacco, due to inflammation and free radicals. And
| that's not even touching on heart disease, which is the
| more realistic concern.
| DirkH wrote:
| It is good provocation even if it is poor analogy.
|
| This is because bacon is more like cigarettes than most
| people assume, even if far less dangerous in practice.
|
| Like another example is "sugar is poison." which is also
| structured as a factual equivalence and also gesturing at
| something real and also designed to land as a stronger
| claim than the evidence warrants.
| ComposedPattern wrote:
| The "dawn of man" was perhaps 100,000 years ago. Humans, in
| some regions, have been raising cattle for maybe 10% of
| that time. And for almost all of that 10%, beef was a
| luxury good eaten only on occasion except by the very rich.
| It was certainly not a staple food. Common people, when
| they ate meat, were much more likely to eat fish, sheep,
| and goats. Cattle were mostly raised for milk and as
| draught animals. There is absolutely nothing natural or
| ancient about contemporary consumption of factory-farmed
| beef, either in quantity or in the manner of production.
| BJones12 wrote:
| You seem to think that the only way to eat a cow is to
| raise it. Humans have been hunting before a long time.
| Before cattle were domesticated, they were wild, and were
| hunted and eaten. So were other ruminants with similar
| meat flavors.
|
| So yes, cattle (and their ancestors, and their relatives)
| have been human food since the dawn of man.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| There are a lot of health conscious vegetarians who still
| like the taste of beyond burger. How is this so weird?
| illiac786 wrote:
| >single natural ingredient
|
| Unfortunately, it's barely natural and there's definitely
| more than one ingredient int he patty at McDonald...
|
| I agree beyond is ultra processed. I disagree on the fact
| that it's worse than most patty. Sure you have 100% organic
| beef patty, but in most burger places I got to, beyond
| still sounds like like the better choice, from a health
| point of view.
|
| And let's not forget the quantity of meat we consume, it's
| too much anyway, yet another reason why a batons burger is
| probably better.
|
| And finally, environmentally, also better than classic
| burger.
|
| But it is true one could take a salad at McDonalds, that
| would be even better.
| DirkH wrote:
| Modern industrial farming practices are so far removed from
| "natural" with how they are processed that an ultra-
| processed slurry of starches and oils is more far more
| "natural" by comparison.
|
| If you want to simply go by societal resilience from
| biorisks then switching to more easily controllable
| substances like plant based meat for protein would be an
| absolute win.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > The whole point of being an ethical vegan/vegetarian is to
| not consume animals
|
| You can agree with this sentiment (ideology?) and not be
| vegan, if you aren't willing to give up meat. giving up meat
| is what defines this demographic.
|
| Relative to a population of people willing to give up meat,
| would you assume there is no difference in "liking how plants
| taste" versus the general population? I'd assume it
| correlates directly with "willingness to give up meat".
|
| > Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over
| hamburgers.
|
| Maybe, but in context its a false dichotomy, why wouldn't
| they pick better substitutes e.g. non-average meat?
| bawolff wrote:
| It does seem like that is literally what happened.
|
| The only people i ever hear say anything positive about
| beyond burger (after the novelty wore off) was meat eaters.
| Vegeterians, for whatever reason, tended not to like it. But
| meat eaters were always going to choose meat anyways, so it
| seems like nobody actually bought it.
| midiguy wrote:
| I feel like I am exactly the target demographic. Love the
| taste of meat. Would eat it every day if there were no
| consequences. But I mostly cook vegetarian at home because
| my wife is veg and I do somewhat care about the impacts of
| factory farming ('ethical' meat being stupid expensive).
| For me Beyond burgers are a good way to scratch that itch a
| bit. I feel like there must be many more people like me
| because meat is both delicious and problematic but maybe
| that's my own bias.
| thegreatpeter wrote:
| If any of this were true they'd be doing much better and not
| pivoting
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This is a way weirder comment than the one you're replying to
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > lacks the [...] bioavailability of real animal protein
|
| I never understood this argument: what's the problem with
| consuming proportionately more to make up for the reduction?
|
| I'm not rushing to demand IV tylenol because its oral
| bioavailability is _only_ 80%-90%, which is around the "loss"
| we're talking for plant vs animal protein on average. And the
| ultraprocessing should improve plant's profile here.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| >what's the problem with consuming proportionately more to
| make up for the reduction?
|
| Because the macros suck. If you're trying to hit certain
| protein / carb / fat ratios, eating more of the "protein"
| means eating a lot more carbs and fat too, which often isn't
| the goal.
|
| Your analogy is not accurate, it would be more like waking up
| in pain in the middle of the night after a bad injury, and
| taking t3s with codeine+ caffeine, and wanting more codeine
| without wanting the added caffeine.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| if you have only fixed-ratio food options, sure, but
| otherwise, no.
|
| > and taking t3s with codeine+ caffeine, and wanting more
| codeine without wanting the added caffeine.
|
| that's what tylenol #4s are for, double the codeine, none
| the caffeine. Take half a t#4 and half of a regular
| standard tylenol = T#3 without the codeine.
| sph wrote:
| Found the tylenol expert
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Eating raw Miso a few times a month can move one's biome to
| get more plant protein digested per gram than even from egg
| whites. So the issue with protein is somewhat overhyped. The
| main potential shortfalls in the vegan diet are vitamins
| B-12, D & K.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| Veganism is a fake health conscious diet. You can eat whatever
| you like while simultaneously feeling superior about it. Oreos,
| chips, pizza, fries, candy, soda, etc. why not also highly
| processed burgers? I say this after having lived with vegans
| who literally ate vegan pizza every day.
| etbebl wrote:
| You can be vegan as part of a health conscious diet, but
| strict veganism is usually motivated by ethics, not health.
| (That being said obviously there's more market share if
| you're in the intersection of the venn diagram.)
| tys- wrote:
| Completely agree (said as a vegan of about 15 years who
| eats way too much junk food).
| tys- wrote:
| My wife often quips that on our first stay-at-home date
| during Covid she made me a fruit bowl for my desert whilst
| she had ice cream. The fruit was amazing but I (much to my
| wife's surprise) also immediately Uber Eats'd a full tub of
| Vegan Ben & Jerry's.
|
| I've personally never met another vegan who chose this
| lifestyle for "diet" reasons. They'll be out there for sure,
| but for the folks I know It's always been about the animals.
|
| Just because I choose not to eat animals doesn't mean I'm
| choosing to be healthy :) I should focus more on the food
| that I eat but alas, it's just not how I roll at the moment.
|
| You do get some unintentional health benefits here and there
| (lower cholesterol in my case) but other trade-offs too for
| those like me that aren't as diligent as they should be
| (lower b-12, iron etc).
|
| This is completely unrelated to the question of "can you be
| healthy as a vegan". To that I would say absolutely. Is it
| the reason most people choose to be vegan - my gut would say
| no (but I'm not claiming this as fact).
|
| Goddamn I love me some Oreos.
|
| Plus, it's easier to sit atop a high horse when you're not
| eating it ;)
| mhitza wrote:
| Veganism is not "a fake health conscious diet". It could be
| for the people around you but doesn't deserve to be
| universally qualified as such.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| so in order for vegans to be legit for you, they not only
| have to find alternatives for everything, constantly be on
| the lookout not to accidentally buy or consume products
| related to animals, no - they also all have to be eating
| healthy and organic constantly in order not to be phony
| fakes.
|
| what a weird form of gatekeeping. at least they're using some
| form of ethics and trying to change the world in a way
| they're able to.
|
| coming from a non-vegan, btw, even though this shouldn't even
| be a requirement.
| derefr wrote:
| How about these two niches:
|
| 1. non-vegans eating with vegans _at a vegan restaurant_ ,
| where eating there wasn't their choice (they were _craving_ a
| burger), and so, being forced to order off this menu, will
| choose the most burger-like thing on the menu.
|
| 2. non-vegans eating with vegans at a _non-vegan_ restaurant,
| where for whatever reason they feel the need to impress / not-
| offend the vegan by eating vegan food as well. (Think "first
| date" or "client meeting.")
| fooker wrote:
| In both the situations, I'd order the best vegan thing on the
| menu instead of nasty imitation meat.
| Nursie wrote:
| Ethical vegans and vegetarians may like the taste of meat but
| be sworn off it because of their ethics. I see this so much in
| these discussions - if they don't like meat then why are they
| going for a subsitute? They love vegetables so should stick to
| vegetables.
|
| Do people genuinely think that 'ethical' vegans and vegetarians
| are doing it because they don't _like_ meat? Or genuinely not
| comprehend the idea of taking an ethical stance even if you
| actually like something?
|
| For illustration, human baby could be the best tasting barbecue
| on the planet, but even if it was I would still think that
| murdering children for my dinner would be wrong and wouldn't do
| it. Ethical vegans and vegetarians feel similarly about eating
| meat, that it's (often) delicious but killing animals for food
| is wrong. Offering them a "meat without any of the suffering"
| option, in theory, has quite a large audience.
|
| Plus as a meat-eater who had a vegetarian partner for a few
| years, things like impossible mince also made it easier for me
| to cook things we could both enjoy, and things like
| beyond/impossible made eating out a little easier in burger
| joints etc.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| their demo is vegans who want a burger, which is not a rare
| thing at all.
| shafyy wrote:
| Obviously there is a big enough market for plant-based meat
| alternatives. At least in the European countries I have lived,
| if you go into a grocery store, you will see a large aisle that
| sells this stuff. Many big companies likes Nestle are in this
| market. They sure as hell are not doing it for ethical reasons,
| they are making money.
|
| Just because Beyond as a company is doing bad doesn't mean the
| whole category of products is doing bad.
| Insanity wrote:
| I'm vegetarian and used to live in EU. Strong +1 to this,
| many more meat alternatives than in Canada/US, and the
| options taste better whilst being overall healthier. The
| amount of fat and salt in the products in NA is sad to see.
| shafyy wrote:
| > _The amount of fat and salt in the products in NA is sad
| to see_
|
| That's true for many products across the board, not only
| vegan ones though.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| As an ex-vegetarian, I never understood the premise of the
| Impossible/Beyond stuff because when they launched there
| already was a really good soy burger in the supermarket frozen
| aisle that had excellent macros, priced reasonably, and tasted
| great.
|
| I never thought the notion of "let's make the veggie burger
| taste like meat" made _any_ sense.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I like them and buy them.
|
| I'ma regular guy who likes burgers but is very worried about
| the effects cattle farming has on the planet. I don't love
| killing animals so I can have a tastier meal either.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Right, so because no one in this thread has the ability to
| remember past their own personal preferences:
|
| The demographic that Beyond and Impossible claimed to be
| chasing was the like 85% of Americans that answered polls about
| wanting to eat less meat (back in the early 201Xs). "Meatless
| Monday", weeknight vegetarian... Whatever. Thats who they
| pitched investors on.
|
| It's also a market that never materialized, whether because it
| was always a mirage of push polling or because an ascendant
| fascist GOP has made meat eating a cornerstone of their
| identity or COVID or whatever.
| MarceliusK wrote:
| The pitch always seemed aimed at meat eaters who might replace
| one or two meals a week if the substitute was close enough
| kgwxd wrote:
| The target from any position in the pyramid is always the next
| level down.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well I used to buy them because my daughter decided to become a
| vegetarian and we needed something that we all agreed on.
|
| Yes it was generally more expensive, for the worst quality meat
| but otherwise I think it was at a reasonable medium price
| point.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| The way you say "ultra processed" just shows the agro lobby did
| it's thing. You have to realize processed in the case of beyond
| is mechanically separating whole pea to use the protein.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| You are right. I assumed it would be full of junk like most
| meat substitute products. But I took a look at the
| ingredients list of the Dutch version, it seems the
| preservative (potassium lactate) is the only problem,
| everything else seems acceptable. I'm quite surprised by how
| decent the ingredients are.
|
| Still, I don't really have a reason to buy it. I don't avoid
| meat. I specifically eat beef for, for example, creatine and
| iron. But I guess it _is_ good for people who crave beef yet
| have an ideological resistance against meat, a niche which I
| 'm not sure how big it is.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Supermarket burger patties all have nitrates to
| cure/preserve them which turn into nitrosamines when cooked
| (carcinogenic). Same goes for bacon etc. I'm actually super
| appalled how the agrolobby with its full-page ads was able
| to turn something healthy into something being viewed as
| chemical and unhealthy.
| timmmmmmay wrote:
| you've posted this multiple times and it's not actually
| true. go read the ingredients list on a supermarket
| burger
| ricardobayes wrote:
| You're right, it's more salami, hot dogs and other meat
| products. But you're right on burgers themselves for the
| most part.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Ethical vegetarians are exactly the people who might like meat
| but refuse to eat it because of the impacts. Maybe you mean
| "natural" vegetarians - people who just don't like meat any way
| so don't eat it
| liveoneggs wrote:
| The demographic is people who have tricked themselves into
| thinking there are "healthy options" at a hamburger restaurant
| and who are willing to pay $2 extra for that validation.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually
| like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made
| ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver (never mind issues
| surrounding industrial agriculture)._
|
| I don't see why this follows. There are a lot of ethical vegans
| and vegetarians who like junk food. And these patties have
| higher protein than less processed plant based alternatives,
| which is important to a lot of people. It's just that
| vegetarians and vegans are a small portion of the overall
| "burger" market.
|
| I suspect the "meat" branding helped early on, because it got
| some people to give it a try who otherwise never would have.
| There were other plant-based burgers on the market already but
| Beyond really exploded quickly.
|
| It's just that it didn't really live up to the hype enough for
| meat eaters to go back for a second helping after the novelty
| wore off. So at this point the "meat" in the brand name isn't
| doing anything.
| blks wrote:
| I haven't been eating meat for 14 years, and I sometimes buy
| stuff like beyond meat patties or similar, but definitely not
| as a daily food, but like a fast food to eat with beer, or to
| take with me when grilling with friends. So I assume same way
| how other people eat meat burgers (am I correct to assume that
| people don't eat McDonald's or supermarket burgers everyday?).
|
| And it's not really about the taste, it's more about form
| factor of a "protein fried patty" in a sandwich. Could easily
| be falafel.
|
| Normal daily food is of course actual vegan/vegetarian food
| that doesn't need to pretend to be meat.
| paulirwin wrote:
| As a vegetarian of 20 years, I like being able to go to
| restaurants and have something that is on par with what my
| friends and family are eating (although I do prefer Impossible
| to Beyond, by far). Even without friends and family, there's a
| social (and distinctively American) aspect to being able to
| have a realistic burger and beer at my local sports bar/grill
| and not just have a salad or some Sysco frozen black bean
| burger.
| drewg123 wrote:
| I'm the demographic. I became vegan a several years ago when I
| was in my late 40s for health reasons -- all males in my family
| my age or older have had multiple heart attacks except for me.
| I didn't become vegan because I like eating salads. I miss the
| taste of meat, and beyond does a decent job of it (Impossible
| is far better).
|
| If animal agriculture was not subsidized, I expect plant based
| "meats" would be on par or cheaper than real meat.
| Angostura wrote:
| I bought them because I like meat but want to reduce my carbon
| footprint a bit and am not that impressed with animal husbandry
| standards
| lynndotpy wrote:
| "Ethical vegans" are just as capable of wanting a salty, oily
| piece of junk food to slither down their gullet. I'd wager
| practically every vegan that exists in the US spent at least a
| decade of their formative years eating burgers at least a few
| times a year.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| I'm not a vegan but I eat Beyond. The stuff is perfectly good
| on its own merits. The steak tips have great protein numbers,
| take hot sauce well, and therefore makes a great breakfast.
| waffletower wrote:
| The large Beyond patty has 260mg of salt. The American Heart
| Association recommends a daily limit of 2300mg, with an ideal
| limit of 1500mg for most adults, _including those with high
| blood pressure_. How is this a salt bomb? You can eat 4 of them
| a day and still have salt to spare in your diet.
| drakonka wrote:
| People like me: who prefer not to kill animals to live but
| enjoy the taste of some type of meat in moderation. I am
| absolutely happy to pay for a premium meat alternative for the
| occasional visit to a burger joint. There are lots of them
| where I live alongside the Beyond patties and they're quite
| popular. I'm not quite sure what desperation has to do with it
| - you just eat things you enjoy that fit your dietary
| preferences.
| Wistar wrote:
| The demographic includes my spouse who likes the taste and
| texture of both Beyond and Impossible burgers much more than
| ground beef burgers.
|
| Beyond sausage links are damn good.
| msie wrote:
| I've had to switch to a less-meat-protein diet because of my
| kidney issues. This is one way to do it. It is pretty tasty!
| fn-mote wrote:
| There is a huge thread basically refuting the parent's "nobody
| wants this" claim.
|
| The fact that the Beyond Burger sells in mainstream grocery
| stores tells you all that you need to know: it's popular
| (enough). There are muliple products in this niche in my not-
| very-large grocery store.
|
| Grocery stores don't stock products that don't sell. No matter
| how you personally think it doesn't have a niche.
| jfengel wrote:
| That's too bad. I don't expect fake-meats to be healthy, or
| cheap, but I like that they can be made without killing animals
| and without raising them in inhumane conditions.
|
| I had really hoped that people would say, "Well, if it tastes
| close enough, then how about I go for the cruelty-free version."
| And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food
| hamburger.
|
| Perhaps the cognitive dissonance is just too much. The world
| would be a better place if we ate less meat, even if we don't
| eliminate it entirely. But to acknowledge the cruelty by avoiding
| it sometimes means facing it when you do choose animal protein.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but beyond has never tasted close to the
| original. Impossible does.
|
| The fact that it doesn't taste close to the original and that
| it commands a price premium is why I ultimately gave up on it.
| Where I might use beyond, I can usually get a healthier option
| using ground turkey instead with a much more agreeable flavor
| and price.
|
| But really, I've just focused on making more meatless dishes in
| general. Highlighting the flavor of legumes and mushrooms beats
| trying to fake the flavor of beef.
| jghn wrote:
| Not just you. To me Beyond tastes barely better than the
| classic fake meat products. Whereas I find impossible
| actually tastes good.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Impossible definitely has more of a "dead cow funk" taste to
| it. Which is why I actually prefer Beyond Meat, because it
| tastes better without "that taste".
|
| I think it actually is "Beyond" meat, in that sense.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The issue I have is I can definitely taste ingredients and
| they don't really jive with me. Like, the pea and beat
| flavors come out pretty strongly to me and gives the
| patties a sort of funky smell.
|
| IMO, this is a much better tasting burger that doesn't try
| to fake beef flavor (Not vegan) [1]
|
| [1] https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-black-bean-burger-
| recip...
| cdcarter wrote:
| I don't think beyond tastes that crazy, but I have to
| jump in to support this bean burger. These guys are the
| real deal.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I never found it close enough, and it's expensive, and it's bad
| for you. So no thanks.
| Liftyee wrote:
| > as good as a fast-food hamburger
|
| But at a much higher price? The value is not really there IMO.
|
| From their performance it seems like the intersection of (cares
| about animals | methane emissions) & doesn't mind health
| effects & less price sensitive & _must_ eat hamburger-likes is
| too small.
|
| Interesting point on cognitive dissonance though. I think it's
| possible to draw a rational tradeoff between acceptable amount
| of (externalised) cruelty and personal benefits of eating meat
| - no cognitive dissonance needed.
| stackghost wrote:
| >And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food
| hamburger.
|
| It's not, though. Vegans that I know always proselytize about
| how "you can't even tell the difference" but I can tell the
| difference.
|
| I don't understand the weird vegan obsession with eating fake
| food. Edible oil product "vegan cheese" and other junk.
|
| If you want to eat meat, eat it. If you don't, don't. You do
| you, but don't try to sell me on disgusting fake food.
| thfuran wrote:
| It's petty straightforward. They want to taste meat but don't
| want to eat animals.
| stackghost wrote:
| My point is they're not tasting meat. Even the Impossible
| one doesn't taste like meat.
|
| It tastes like imitation meat, the same way artificial
| vanilla tastes like imitation vanilla.
|
| People are just deceiving themselves.
| brailsafe wrote:
| > People are just deceiving themselves.
|
| I agree and also find it unpleasant, but I wouldn't claim
| to be incredulous that someone would deliberately want to
| deceive themselves. We deceive ourselves all the time for
| all sorts of stupid and less stupid reasons. If you need
| money but hate your job, you have to convince yourself
| that somehow getting up every day grinding it out is
| worth it. If you don't need money but are addicted to it,
| or don't have any other hobbies, you deceive yourself
| into making your number higher.
|
| If you're a bodybuilder you might have convinced yourself
| that a certain repulsive aesthetic is attractive, or if
| you have weight issues, you might intentionally deceive
| yourself into hating the consumption addictions that are
| your weakness.
|
| Many people who are vegans do happen to convince
| themselves of remarkably implausible nonsense that I
| haven't really seen in others as much, but it's usually
| due to what I'd suspect are other underlying mental
| health issues--the two groups I've observed the most
| mistrust in medicine from are 30+ men and vegans.
|
| The act of self-deception itself isn't rare though
| halapro wrote:
| > how about I go for the cruelty-free version.
|
| They should just use that as a label: https://xkcd.com/641/
|
| _Would you like the cruel or cruelty-free patty?_
| entropyneur wrote:
| It was close enough for me and I do acknowledge the cruelty and
| abstain from many kinds of meat. I was super excited when I
| tried it first. But after about a year of being part of my
| regular diet it started being disgusting unfortunately. Now I
| can only eat it once a in a while.
| baud147258 wrote:
| Personally, when I want to eat less meat, I just eat something
| else, because they are enough vegetarian/vegan alternatives out
| there that I don't really see the point of a poor imitation
| that's even more expensive than the real thing.
| tonymet wrote:
| How can you grow plants without killing animals?
| troyvit wrote:
| I think it's a question of degree. For instance, if you grow
| an acre of corn you kill a few animals right? And you have an
| acre of corn which would feed a few people for a year.
|
| A cow takes about 10x as much corn per serving of meat, so
| that's 10x as many critters killed, and then you have to kill
| the cow.
|
| The creatures that are killed in the field, or on the road or
| whatever, they are living their little lives eating and
| screwing and doing all the fun stuff creatures do until they
| get brained by a tilling disk or whatever.
|
| A cow on the other hand, in a U.S. cafo? I mean if you like
| wading through your own shit, nose to asshole with all your
| compatriots, eating food that your GI tract doesn't even like
| that much so that you can get overweight? No stimulus, no
| sex, no variance in diet, then you'd love to be a cow.
|
| For me, I just don't want to eat that.
| tonymet wrote:
| I live around thousands of cows grazing and they seem just
| as natural as your critters. I'm glad some folks are aware
| that producing food kills animals. And graziers are
| consuming grass. I have friends primarily eating Deer &
| Graziers, so their animal impact is similar to your happy
| critters.
| troyvit wrote:
| Cool I live 40 miles downwind from this:
| https://www.greeleytribune.com/2013/10/31/greeley-based-
| ag-g...
|
| When there's an up-slope winter breeze I can smell it.
| bequanna wrote:
| I'm completely against factory farming, confinement barns, etc
| and always avoid meat produced this way.
|
| But I do wonder what you mean when you say "cruelty" in the
| context of cattle.
|
| Having lived in/around rural livestock production most of my
| life, I can tell you that most cattle operations I am familiar
| with take excellent care of the their animals. Minimizing
| stress is absolutely a top goal for them.
|
| Pork, on the other hand, is almost always produced in a
| horrifying, cruel way. Confinement barns are terrible in every
| sense of the word. Pigs are treated without respect from cradle
| to grave.
| dnlzro wrote:
| It depends on the laws of your country, but here in Canada,
| you can't slaughter cows on your farm. They have to be
| transported, often long distances, to a slaughterhouse.
| Slaughterhouses, and the metal box that brings them there,
| aren't very nice places for a cow.
| raptor99 wrote:
| lol Way to jump to a conclusion and then use it as your basis
| for your entire comment. Most people don't want some expensive
| fake ass meat that is so packed with chemicals and additives
| that they would rather just buy meat instead and eat it, even
| if it isnt as healthy as it could be if it were raised more
| sustainably and naturally than most of it is nowadays.
| cpursley wrote:
| I never understood these engineered ultra processed meat
| imitation products, they are not healthy - period. There's
| already healthy and delicious cuisines that have developed over
| thousands of years (Indian, Nepalese, I'm sure many others). This
| desire to just recreate the SAD (standard American diet) with goo
| is beyond strange...
| XorNot wrote:
| I really like a good burger, but am somewhat sympathetic to the
| arguments put forwards about the meat industry and it's
| impacts.
|
| What's to not understand?
| andrepd wrote:
| You can make thousands of absolutely delicious vegetable
| dishes. You can adapt another few thousands by replacing the
| meat with veggies. Why the obsession about ultraprocessed "meat
| substitutes"?
| cpursley wrote:
| But thats much different than these gross goos.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Low-protein Indian diets are not healthy. The food certainly
| tastes good, but let's be real, there's a reason heart disease
| and diabetes in the subcontinent are stratospheric.
| cpursley wrote:
| You're getting downvoted but they do seem to have some of
| these issues, including the skinny fat problem. But their
| cuisine sure is tastier than the fake meat and other goop
| that is pushed, which is even worse for health.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| They are for vegetarians who want something that tastes similar
| to a burger.
| asdff wrote:
| I wouldn't go as far as saying that. I think for them they
| want something that has the "utility" of a burger, as in here
| is some easy protein plus some sundry stuff packaged into a
| hand holdable unit that is pretty filling on its own and cost
| like $12 at a restaurant.
|
| The reason is for a lot of them is that they become repulsed
| by the smell of meat after not eating it for a long time. So
| they would very much not want something that tastes like
| meat. They just want the function of the burger really. And
| to be fair there isn't a lot of good options otherwise for
| vegetarians that are truly comperable to a burger in terms of
| it as a product. Veggie lunch meat is even sadder state of
| affairs than the burger meat so sandwiches are out. Then you
| have bean burritos I guess, falafel wrap. All stuff that
| tends to be found solely in ethnic specific restaurants than
| democratized across the entire globe like the burger is,
| which you can probably find anywhere you find reliable
| electricity in 2026.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'm a vegetarian who likes burgers, but all the flavour in a
| burger comes from vegetables anyway: the sauces, garnishes,
| etc, plus cheese, of course. So I just go one step further
| and replace the patty with something made from veggies too.
| More delicious, and cruelty free.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Is animal meat healthy? In small amounts (10% less caloric
| intake) disease correlation does not increase, but higher then
| 10%, disease rates see a direct correlatory increase.
|
| The plant meats are healthier than the animal meats.
| cpursley wrote:
| There's so such thing as "plant meats", and yes, animal meat
| is healthy when balanced with a good diet. What's killing
| everyone is the white carbs and sugar, not the meats and
| fats. Anyone telling you otherwise is ideologically motivated
| vs science-based.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I never understood these engineered ultra processed meat
| imitation products, they are not healthy - period.
|
| People don't eat burgers for health reasons.
|
| > There's already healthy and delicious cuisines that have
| developed over thousands of years (Indian, Nepalese, I'm sure
| many others).
|
| Why eat ice cream when chicken is healthier?
|
| You're comparing apples and oranges. Yes, there are plenty of
| delicious vegetarian foods, but you can't just substitute one
| for the other. If you're craving eggplants, replacing it with
| lentils will not satisfy you.
| cpursley wrote:
| Then eat a burger if you want a burger, they are healthy if
| you skip the buns and sugar ketchup and use quality beef.
| Throw it on a veg salad for a balanced meal.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I know many disagree, but Impossible patties are healthier
| and taste better.
|
| Furthermore it's nice that no animal got killed and there
| were fewer emissions.
| cpursley wrote:
| It's not a disagreement, it's science. You are conflating
| your views on animals rights with this ultra processed
| goop, which is a common logical fallacy. I respect and
| understand the animals rights perspective, but the fake
| meat is simply not healthy. Don't believe me, just see
| what high level athletes eat and the diets of cultures
| who live long.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Conflating ultra processed food with health is the actual
| fallacy here. It's nothing more than a heuristic.
|
| Reminds me of folks who said "Avoid gluten-free because
| it's less healthy."
|
| And high level athletes don't eat a lot of burger
| patties. They eat chicken (likely breast). When you're
| consuming a lot of meat, you have to make sure it's of
| good quality.
|
| Also, just to point out:
|
| > but the fake meat is simply not healthy.
|
| I never said it's healthy. I can equally say:
|
| > Beef patties are not healthy
| 6510 wrote:
| Maybe I've missed it but I see a much more palatable market in
| "light" meats. It has great flavor and texture but it needs to be
| part of a composition even if it is just salt and pepper. I've
| seen really great tasting meatballs in the wild that had less
| than 4% meat in them, say 5% for lazy calculations. You can feed
| it to 20 people and get the same results as 19 vegetarians + one
| meat eater.
|
| Some are so much into meat the vegetarian evangelism has about as
| much chance as trying to convince them cannibalism is the
| solution to all world problems.
|
| If you sell them something cheap that tastes great and tell them
| it has meat in it there is no need for all that tiresome talking
| about saving the world on an empty stomach. They become easy to
| catch and kill.
| deaux wrote:
| In the UK there's a meme that Richmond's plant-based sausages
| taste better than their "meat" sausages because they already
| had years of experience making sausages with no meat in them.
| "Meme" in the sense of "funny because it's true", even many
| meat-eaters agree. In processed food so much of the "meat"
| product is already pork eyeballs and chicken anuses that
| there's zero difference in substituting it with something that
| doesn't count as "meat" but with a similar texture.
| midnitewarrior wrote:
| This is the moment, but they refuse to market the product in a
| way that is acceptable, (and adds affordability) to consumers.
|
| If they would do a 55/45 beef/plant-based meat blend and burgers,
| I think adoption rate would pick up significantly. Anybody who
| questions the taste is going to see that beef is the main
| ingredient. If the product comes in significantly cheaper than
| beef alone, more consumers will try it and look to it as an
| affordable way of eating beef.
|
| For the bigger picture, 65 cows will stretch as far as 100 cows
| previously did, lowering suffering, environmental damage, inputs,
| etc.
|
| For the people who like the 55/45 blend, it would open the door
| to an 80/20 blend plant vs. beef, and a 100% plant-based product.
| asdff wrote:
| I'm not sure how well it would integrate into a cohesive unit.
| Veggie meat is pretty weird stuff in terms of cooking with it.
| It doesn't really want to form cohesive paddies. It is almost
| like feta cheese where there is a tendency for it to break down
| into smaller and smaller pieces the more you work it.
|
| Also really hard to cook with imo compared to meat. Meat is
| nice to cook with from all the fat in there. It just renders
| out perfectly and also separates it from the pan. You get some
| nice carmelization, maillard reactions, all the nice stuff
| going on.
|
| The fake meat is like a sponge for grease on the other hand.
| Nothing renders out. Stuff gets sucked in. It is like being on
| the opposite side of the osmosis reaction going on here. And
| boy do you need grease to cook with this stuff. Otherwise it
| just fuses to the pan like nothing, and again crumbles apart
| getting it off. It pretty much needs to be pan fried and soaks
| up a ton of grease after. You therefore can't trust nutrition
| guidelines because of the grease requirement to get anything
| out of this stuff. I bet if you air fried it, it would be
| absurdly dry.
| AngryData wrote:
| I mean if we were really concerned with lowering animal
| suffering we would be changing farming practices. Factory
| farming is only saving a small amount of the cost of beef over
| more traditional style cattle farming.
|
| Nothing against mixing beef with plants and the like, but there
| are far easier ways to improve the welfare of cattle that only
| costs pennies.
| touwer wrote:
| What a bs. It still grows. Beyond meet was just not unique enough
| to justify the valuation
| maxkfranz wrote:
| A protein soda pop, as they're pivoting to, sounds like a gross
| version of Coca Cola.
|
| The protein bar could work. I personally don't like them, because
| most of them are just candy bars with added protein.
|
| Meat substitutes (e.g. fake turkey made of tofu) are generally an
| inferior good, in both the economic sense and the sense of taste.
| It's not surprising to me that they don't work. Maybe if they're
| made much cheaper.
| datahack wrote:
| We bought and tried their products several times only to find
| they were no different than a basic veggie burger or whatever. We
| couldn't figure out what the hype was even about. And then I
| started reading about how their ingredient list wasn't the
| healthiest.
|
| Just seemed like just another weird Silicon Valley money bubble
| built on hype and vc cash instead of any kind of meaningful
| product differentiation.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong, but that's our genuine experience.
| legitster wrote:
| Obviously Americans have no qualms about artificial foods or
| "inferior" substitutes, but it has to be _cheaper_. Paying a
| premium price for something that 's even a decent facsimile
| guarantees that the product will remain niche.
|
| I also am disappointed there was no iteration or improvement of
| the product over time. There was clearly room to innovate or make
| it taste better - it feels like the product hit, there was some
| excitement about the novelty... and then they didn't capitalize
| on it by pushing new variations and updates.
| khelavastr wrote:
| They could have differentiated on quality instead of serving
| lower grade proteins and lipids
| deterministic wrote:
| > not the moment for plant-based meat
|
| It will never be the right moment for plant-based meat. It is
| ultra processed unhealthy garbage.
|
| The length of the ingredient list tells you everything you need
| to know. The longer it is, the more processed and unhealthy the
| "food" is.
| xvxvx wrote:
| High-protein fizzy drinks. Barf-o-Rama.
| subpixel wrote:
| The beyond patties at Costco are a decent price. Standard retail
| prices are not so great.
|
| I like em but I think the idea of them being somehow premium
| doesn't translate.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| They only seem expensive, since the meaty alternatives are
| higly subsidized.
| jmkr wrote:
| Costco and similar do have them at a decent price, currently
| see them 20$ for 10. I think most people just look at the 2
| packs, which are more expensive.
| 627467 wrote:
| Lets be real: unless fake-meat products become at least the same
| price as equivalent meat options whats the point?
|
| How big is the market for non-ideological vegans/vegetarians that
| are shopping for meat alternatives?
|
| Most people are not ideological with their food. Most people will
| only stop eating meat when it becomes too expensive to afford.
| Simple as that.
|
| What is the status you gain for being seen eating a beyond burger
| in 2026?
| gpm wrote:
| As a rare non-ideological vegetarian (I just really don't like
| the taste) you've got the market for this completely backwards.
| Beyond meat is for ideological vegetarians and vegans who like
| the taste. Non-ideological ones who would really prefer not to
| have a meat substitute.
|
| At something like 6% of the world the market the population of
| ideological vegetarians and vegans is huge. With another
| handful of percent who are ideologically opposed to eating meat
| on certain days but not entirely vegetarian.
|
| PS. Your claim that "most people are not ideologic with their
| food"... Not all food ideology is related to vegetarianism so
| it's not terribly relevant but I think this claim is just
| wrong. Islam + Hinduisim + Buddhism make up nearly half the
| world and all have pretty strong religious ideological beliefs
| about food, and a non-trivial fraction of the quarter of the
| world that is christian has at least a few scruples like
| avoiding meat during lent. And that's just people preaching
| religious beliefs not less documented ideologies like believing
| real men eat their steak raw or whatever.
| 627467 wrote:
| > Beyond meat is for ideological vegetarians and vegans who
| like the taste.
|
| I must be in bubble or have a very different definition of
| "idiological": of the dozens of vegans/vegetarians I know
| none would actively seek the "taste" of industrialized
| "ready-made" "meat replacement". They may put up with it if
| must be, but seek it? Desire it?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| By definition, if you're a vegan or vegetarian for strictly
| ideological reasons, you still like the taste and feel of
| meat. So, compared to a vegetarian or vegan who is doing it
| for other reasons, you're statistically far more likely to
| seek meat substitutes.
|
| Now, this relies on considering people "ideological
| vegans/vegetarians" if their _only_ motivation for not
| eating meat is ideology. This means that the huge amount of
| Hindu Indians who are ideologically opposed to eating meat
| don 't count, since even without this ideological
| motivation, they would still have traditional and social
| and supply reasons to not eat meat.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Lets be real: unless fake-meat products become at least the
| same price as equivalent meat options what's the point?
|
| If you were to make fake plant-based products that were (a)
| noticeably healthier than meat, and (b) indistinguishable from
| meat taste-wise (or better-tasting), I'm quite confident a
| _lot_ of people would pay a premium for that.
|
| The problem is the current products just don't deliver that.
| All they deliver is eco-friendliness at a premium, at which
| point they're basically offering something more akin to the
| optional climate fee on flight tickets.
| 627467 wrote:
| To me your basically describing a climate fee in your
| paragraph.
|
| You can already eat healthy, better and more sustainably but
| doing what humans have done for millions of years. You dont
| need an industrialized, packaged, convenient and standardized
| flavour.
|
| Honestly, i have come to see beyond and impossible as a
| variation of soylent. Its for a very specific and narrow
| market of people that I'd rather not describe
| matt_daemon wrote:
| Curious if this has anything to do with Silicon Valley types
| getting into carnivore diets (though it's been happening for
| years so maybe not)
| ph4rsikal wrote:
| I bought shares after the IPO but sold them all after trying
| their patty and then forgetting the rest in the freezer for 6
| months.
| ramon156 wrote:
| I love investing based on feels, rather than DD
| hapless wrote:
| beyond meat was a super cynical bet that ordinary non-vegetarian
| consumers would no longer be able to afford meat, so they would
| turn to meat substitutes even if they were more costly than meat
| had been in the psat
|
| now they are publicly listed, and their cynical premise has not
| born fruit
|
| time to pivot!
| gusennan wrote:
| Vegetarian here. I like Beyond products, such as their chorizo,
| and eat them all the time. I don't eat animals not because I'm
| trying to "eat healthy", but because I'm trying to opt out
| participating in a system that is brutally cruel to sentient
| beings.
| ramon156 wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat and have to give up cheese since it's
| part of the chain. It's a bummer, I'm pretty addicted to it,
| and plant-based cheese is just nothing compared to a good young
| cheese
|
| I tell myself that in the long-term the pros outweigh the con,
| if you value being on the right side of morality
| tstrimple wrote:
| My wife developed lactose and gluten intolerance both right
| around the same time. Dealing with gluten free alternatives
| has been annoying, but manageable. Milks and butters I can
| easily sub in recipes to good results. I no longer use dairy
| butter or milk in any of my cooking. The vegan cheese stuff
| has been so gross that she's basically dropped it altogether.
| The texture and taste are so wrong and they basically don't
| melt. I'm sure it'll be "solved" eventually but a cheeseless
| pizza is better than a pizza with vegan cheese at this point
| in time.
| billynomates wrote:
| Unfortunately by still eating dairy and eggs, you are
| participating in that system.
| latexr wrote:
| Who says they eat dairy _and_ eggs? "Vegetarian" isn't such a
| simplistic label like that. It doesn't mean "I eat exactly
| these things". For all we know, they eat only eggs and from a
| local farm (or have their own chickens).
|
| Furthermore, it's a bad argument to imply vastly reduced
| complicity with a system is the same as full complicity.
| billynomates wrote:
| Yes that's what vegetarian means, 99% of the time.
|
| Where did I say "full complicity"? But yes, animals who are
| farms for milk and eggs are treated just as badly,
| sometimes worse, than animals that are farmed for meat.
| latexr wrote:
| > Yes that's what vegetarian means, 99% of the time.
|
| What's your source for that claim? I know plenty of
| vegetarians and there's not a single one where I could
| assume they eat both dairy and eggs. I don't think _any_
| of them drink milk (oat drinks and the like are common),
| only some eat cheese, in very varying quantities (from
| regularly to almost never), same with eggs.
|
| You are assuming what your parent commenter does.
|
| > animals who are farms for milk and eggs are treated
| just as badly
|
| Again, you have no idea what your parent commenter does.
| With eggs in particular, there are different tiers
| related to the animals' conditions. It is possible to
| make more ethical choices.
| codeulike wrote:
| But less. Total money from them going into system is lower
| than it otherwise would be, which must have an effect
| vouwfietsman wrote:
| I'm not sure what motivates you to write a comment like this,
| but maybe you should reflect on it.
|
| The person you are replying to is consciously trying to make
| the world a better place, and probably succeeding in a small
| way. Are they perfect? No. But they are literally sacrificing
| something for the good of someone (or something) else. This
| is the definition of altruism.
|
| For some reason, you felt the need to criticize them for not
| being _more_ altruistic?
|
| Finally, if you really want to live cruelty free and 100%
| sustainably, the only option is to throw yourself off of a
| bridge because any time you interact with modern society you
| are producing CO2 indirectly and potentially harming animals,
| no matter how careful you are.
| globular-toast wrote:
| In a world without animal rights, this is sadly inevitable. It
| would be like doing work without slaves in a world without human
| rights. Like, yeah, well done, mate, but I'll still be using my
| slaves, thanks, it's much cheaper.
| gs17 wrote:
| > In a world without animal rights
|
| And also one where animal agriculture is heavily subsidized.
| Sjeiti wrote:
| My first thought for this name change would be the European meat
| lobby prohibiting meat related names for non-animal products.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I always though Beyond Meat was pretty meh. I've enjoyed
| Impossible Burgers. I've never enjoyed a Beyond Meat burger.
| gethly wrote:
| Beyond, "I can't believe it's not meat" ... it's not. I'm sure
| all their 5 vegan customers will keep them afloat.
| billynomates wrote:
| >Beyond Meat CEO Says 'It's Just Not The Moment For Plant-Based
| Meat' After Rebrand
|
| It absolutely is the time for plant-based meat. It has never been
| more crucial. It's just that their business model was easily
| replicable.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Beyond Moat, or something. Not like I know the words, I just
| play with computers
| tom1337 wrote:
| Also (at least in germany) their burger patties are nearly
| twice as expensive as groundbeef. I really like them but since
| I am neither vegan or vegetarian I either opted to groundbeef
| or to haloumi or something as a replacement. I think the
| substitutes could work well when they are reasonably priced or
| actually cheaper than what they want to replace so people are
| more likely to try it. Same goes with soy milk. Alpro costs
| like 2.80EUR/L while common dairy milk is less than a euro per
| liter.
| ahoka wrote:
| It's because the meat industry is a welfare queen. In my
| local supermarket last year I could buy pork for ~8 EUR by
| kg, but champignons costed 10 (Nordic country).
| tom1337 wrote:
| Yea I think its the same in germany (at least with dairy
| products)
| hobofan wrote:
| > Alpro costs like 2.80EUR/L while common dairy milk is less
| than a euro per liter
|
| Sure if we are cherry picking the "premium" brand this
| comparison works. Store brand soy or oat milk are 0,95EUR[0]
| and 0,90EUR[1] per liter respectively, so about what cow milk
| costs. For milk and milk alternatives there hasn't been a
| financial differentiator between them for about 5 years now.
|
| With meat replacement patties there is still a significant
| price difference, though there Beyond Meat is also one of the
| more expensive ones (which is bold, as they've also been
| lapped by the competition in taste and variety of products).
|
| [0]: https://www.rewe.de/shop/p/rewe-bio-vegan-soja-
| drink-1l/5852... - Links may not work depending on what
| postcode you enter. Should work with 10115
|
| [1]: https://www.rewe.de/shop/p/rewe-bio-vegan-hafer-drink-
| ohne-z...
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| EUR1.59 per litre for 70% protein per litre, where I am.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| I badly wanted no other market to develop but synthesised meat,
| to produce something at par with natural one.
|
| The industry has successfully marketed and packaged meat as "that
| thing you buy", hiding the immense and unconscionable cruelty
| which sentient beings are subjected to.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| you can easily opt out of meat eating and try learning not to
| desire control over every other person
| the_gastropod wrote:
| You don't often hear from the pro-seal-clubbing lobby.
| IJustLurkHere wrote:
| Yes, the silent majority don't make as much noise as the
| vocal minorities out in the world.
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| Can elaborate on how wishing for the growth of this market is
| "the desire to control every other person"?
| penguin_booze wrote:
| Which part did you read as 'desire to control'?
| MarceliusK wrote:
| The irony is that a lot of people who were interested in plant-
| based eating didn't actually want hyper-engineered meat
| replacements in the first place
| bdcravens wrote:
| I remember going to a grocery store for the first time during the
| pandemic: the meat aisle was completely bare, but there was
| plenty of Beyond products left on the shelf.
| conorcleary wrote:
| probably the same nowadays most places
| outime wrote:
| Nowhere near real meat, full of ultra-processed junk and more
| expensive than the real thing. The solution some people here
| propose: "let's make real meat just as expensive". Yeah sorry,
| you're not getting my sympathy.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| Haven't these guys been to a Taiwanese restaurant, they have
| great mock meats, and of course vegetarians have great mock meats
| too, love a good black bean pattie. The hubris this company shows
| is amazing.
| mapotofu wrote:
| They are focusing on an American palette, which is averse to
| things like tofu, seitan, or tempeh as they are considered not
| masculine enough by a significant portion of the population.
| This is reinforced by both genders.
| jrjeksjd8d wrote:
| There's no hope trying to sell "plant-based hamburger" with
| any name to toxic masculinity advocates who think soy
| feminizes you (even though seitan isn't soy). These guys are
| getting hospitalized from eating all-beef diets because
| chicken is "too feminine".
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| They could wash it down with some Brawndo I suppose
| some_random wrote:
| Great news, thanks to some fantastic "journalism" about
| estrogen contents, artificial meat is now viewed as being
| feminizing in a very literal way.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Tofu is so ridiculously OP in terms of nutrition, production
| costs, and culinary versatility. It's a shame society here in
| the US is so strongly stymied by the manipulative meat lobby.
| butILoveLife wrote:
| As someone who is frugal AF and open minded...
|
| I think you are overstating Tofu.
|
| But honestly I'm mostly eating for nutrition rather than
| taste. Tofu doesnt hit the numbers I need.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Tofu uses about 50x less land, 5x water, and produces 15x
| less CO2 per gram of protein compared to beef. It's
| pretty remarkable by these metrics even compared to other
| plant foods. Tofu would certainly be understood as "OP"
| in any simulated game like civilization. We in the US are
| disadvantaged just for our intractable attachment to
| beef.
|
| Plus, all the other nice things about it (high in fiber,
| doesn't incur the bodily damage associated with red meat
| and saturated fat, is complete protein, lasts for over a
| month in the fridge, can be produced shelf-table, etc.)
| And it's not like you have to choose one or the other.
|
| Meat is subsidized in the US, so while tofu is usually
| cheap, it's not by as much as those numbers would
| suggest. (About 3x, for those just tracking protein. At
| my Costco, it's about $30 for 4lb of 85% ground beef or
| $7 for 4lb of tofu. That works out to $0.10 per gram
| protein for the beef, or $0.03 per gram of protein for
| the tofu.)
| Insanity wrote:
| Back in Europe I had many good meat alternatives in grocery
| stores that were quite budget friendly as well. Like
| vegetarian 'Schnitzel', 'chicken', 'fish'. Here in NA, most
| of the meat alternatives are breaded, or high in fat and
| salt. It's disappointing.
| kgnhkldlsm wrote:
| Junk food for vegans.
| calrain wrote:
| Highly processed food should be avoided at all costs.
| t1234s wrote:
| I think beyond nailed the texture of their burger patties. When
| you fry one up it has the same texture as a cheap frozen
| hamburger patty. Their sausage links also have a similar texture
| to a cheap frozen bratwurst. I think beyond nailed the taste a
| bit better than impossible. Also beyond seems to use better
| ingredients than impossible. All these products are high in
| sodium like all processed food and you definitely shouldn't live
| off them, just like you shouldn't live off cheap frozen burgers
| and sausages. Price-wise they cost more per pound than good
| quality beef in my area. For any meat eater you should definitely
| amuse yourself and fry up some of this "Internet Meat" and try it
| out.
| raptor99 wrote:
| I think nature nailed the texture of their burger patties. When
| you fry one up it has the same texture as a beyond patty.
| Nature's sausage links also have a similar texture to beyond
| sausage. I think nature nailed the taste a bit better than
| beyond. Also nature seems to use better ingredients than
| beyond. All these products are high in sodium like all
| processed food and you definitely shouldn't live off them, just
| like you shouldn't live off beyond burgers and sausages. Price-
| wise they cost less per pound than beyond. For any vegetarian
| or vegan you should definitely amuse yourself and fry up some
| of this natural meat and try it out.
| nbosse wrote:
| One of the underrated ways of reducing meat consumption, imo,
| would be to mix a certain percentage of plant-based meat to
| regular meat products. Imagine a world in which McDonald's would
| just mix 20% plant-based meet to their patties. I can see some
| risk for them, but honestly, long-term, I don't think people
| would actually mind much.
| Angostura wrote:
| The did that in Tesco (uk supermarket) for a couple of years -
| sold fresh mince that contained 30% carrot and other veg. I
| used it quite a lot and it was good. But they stopped. I guess
| it wasn't popular
| nbosse wrote:
| oh, what a shame! Also interesting that they stopped that
| after a couple of years... You'd think that it would either
| flop from the beginning or just work
| some_random wrote:
| You can already do that to great effect by mixing in mushrooms,
| the end result tastes great and doesn't require a billion
| dollar company providing fake meat.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| On this subject, my university rolled out mushroom-blended beef
| burgers in the 2010s. They were poorly received for replacing
| beef burgers entirely.
|
| I wasn't vegan or vegetarian at the time and I thought they
| were just a complete improvement over beef burgers. But I think
| that thick congealing beef fat is gross and that it's just
| better mixed with mushroom juice, and I also already liked
| mushrooms.
| mckennameyer wrote:
| It seems like a marketing play to seize on the protein movement.
| What will they do when fiber becomes the next craze?
| leftytak wrote:
| Beyond (Meat) already generated bad reps already. The tainted
| brand won't do well no matter how much they pivot.
|
| If I were vegan, I'd cook my own meals because then I'd really
| know what's in the food I eat.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Judging by other comments I guess I'm in the minority here: I'm a
| meat-eater that just enjoys the flavor of the Beyond Meat
| products. They taste absolutely delicious to me. I don't view it
| as a meat alternative, so I couldn't care less about that side of
| the debate. I enjoy it like I enjoy a good falafel.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Well that's just beyond.
| cmiles8 wrote:
| For the whole industry is trying to solve a problem that never
| really existed.
|
| Folks can not like meat for ethical issues but it is a good
| source of protein and our bodies are designed to eat it. If you
| don't want to eat meat there are other good sources of nutrients
| from a carefully designed vegetarian diet. The whole "fake meat"
| thing was always just a silly gimmick.
|
| More broadly, as others have highlighted, the result is mostly
| over-processed lab goo that most health conscious people would
| avoid. There are plenty of good sources of protein without the
| need for magic shakes either.
|
| Net here is a business trying to solve problems that aren't
| really problems. The stock being down 98.9% is a reflection of
| that cold reality.
| elsjaako wrote:
| You can like the taste of meat but think it's unethical to kill
| animals for food. It's not necessarily a "problem", but it is
| something a reasonable person might want, and so there can be a
| market for it.
| 5A704C1N wrote:
| There is nothing that says we are "designed" to consume animal
| protein.
|
| Beyond, Impossible, and the like have suffered from
| misinformation and an industry-funded, influencer-laden social
| media smear campaign to paint these alternative products as
| highly-processed franken-foods.
|
| They are a good alternative for health and environmentally-
| conscious folks, solve real sustainability challenges, and
| aren't terrible for you in moderation.
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| $BYND is also filing their 10-K Annual Report late[1]:
|
| _the Company requires additional time to complete a review and
| analysis related to its inventory balances, including amounts
| recorded for the provision of excess and obsolete inventory_
|
| [1]
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1655210/000165521026...
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