About 10 years ago I became more aware that reducing my consumption of meat was good for the world. The was good for Beyond Meat’s prospects.
About 5 years ago I became more aware that reducing my consumption of ultra processed food was good for me. This was very bad for Beyond Meat’s prospects.
I don't understand the point of "fake meat" burgers. Like, there are so many good recipes and ingredients out there that don't try to mimic meat and are still good and tasty. Look at Indian food, for instance. They sure found a way to make pulses and other humble ingredients tasty and delicious. Or the many Mediterranean dishes that just happen to be vegan or vegetarian, but are meatless because they simply were good enough like that.
I think fake meat wasn't really about "getting people to eat less meat", it was based on the expectation that the average person only wants to eat the same exact thing they ever did without ever widening their culinary horizons. The only problem is, that a person that's open enough to try fake meat is probably open minded enough to try new things in general, including foods that aren't served between two slices of bread.
The people that stubbornly refuse to vary their diets often won't try new stuff anyway
I agree. If you want to eat meat, fine. If you don’t want to eat meat, fine. But the whole, “Let’s trick our taste buds and eat fake meat,” thing doesn’t make much sense to me.
Say you're on the road with a vegetarian and the only place to stop is a fast food burger place. If that fast food place has a fake meat burger on the menu then they'll get a sale from the vegetarian.
I used to just get the "veggie whopper" i.e. all of the fixings, but no pattie at all. There were enough bread, mayo, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese that I got plenty of calories and felt full.
Not everyone likes Indian food. I think most people like familiar flavors. Western people didn't grow up eating veggie-based food so I don't know why this is surprising. People just want to eat familiar things.
I like indian food. I like a good black bean burger. I also like real meat and fake meat. I wouldn’t mind eating less real meat if the fake meat was even closer and offered more pervasively.
What I've noticed, especially from visiting Singapore, is that Indian (and other South Asian) religious vegetarianism often involves finding great alternatives to meat, while Chinese religious vegetarian often involves finding imitations of meat. Both of these habits are rather strong culturally and it would probably feel kind of weird to Indian vegetarians to eat mock meat, or to Chinese vegetarians not to eat mock meat.
The big (well, it's all relative!) mock meat store in Oakland, California, is in Chinatown and their staff and clientele are mostly Chinese, and their products are mostly from Chinese-speaking regions and companies. They have dozens of highly specific mock meats so that people can avoid the religious violations associated with eating meat, while continuing to have specific dishes that they're familiar with.
I personally started out with aesthetic vegetarianism before getting into ethical vegetarianism; that means I disliked meat itself at first, so I usually haven't been excited for mock meat and sometimes have been grossed out by it. But I have a good friend who started out with ethical vegetarianism and has never gotten into aesthetic vegetarianism; he loved meat but came to feel that it was rather harmful and didn't want to be responsible for its production. He has been trying every single kind of mock meat that he can find ever since going vegetarian and has made many of them staple parts of his diet.
I doubt that there's a single way to bridge this cultural gap or resolve it decisively in favor of one tradition or the other.
I totally agree that cultures that have a native tradition of vegetarianism (Indian, Ethiopian, Eastern Orthodox Christian) have tended to come up with awesome stuff that's not based on meat at all. However, people going vegetarian from a non-vegetarian cultural and culinary background don't necessarily want to change their entire cuisine and palate as a result. For many of them, that means mock meats are an extremely appealing option!
Well presumably those other cuisines took a long time to develop the good recipes you mention.
It’s not really biologically normal for humans to just up and completely change their culture based on logic. So while Indians have already done the intergenerational work to have good vegan dishes, in the west we don’t have that. Making a drop in replacement that works within the existing food culture does seem like a reasonable hack.
I'd say that proportion of what you might call "vegan" food in india is quite small. Dairy-based products are everywhere in vegetarian dishes, and many (too many, imho) recipes treat paneer as the default stand-in for meat.
Food is important. Most people don't want to stop eating all the dishes they enjoy and just switch to Indian food. People lie on a spectrum of openness to new things. Developing a high quality direct alternative to a foundational yet highly fraught ingredient of the American diet makes sense to me. Even a bit less beef mitigates the near daily amputations by workers at processing plants or horrors we are adding to with climate annihilation.
Personally, Impossible and Beyond materially improved my life by adding to it. I enjoy their products, and still make plenty of Indian food.
Beyond developed a novelty product that focused entirely on the aesthetics of meat. But let's be real. Their products taste like crap and them scaling up with that awful recipe was never going to work.
The reaper is coming for Impossible soon, but at least in the tiniest possible way, they at least kinda taste like meat.
Regardless, this whole industry is built on hype. It's never going to be cheaper, healthier, or tastier than just a simple black bean burger.
They always struck me as a weird niche, as vegetarian food for non-vegetarians.
Most vegetarians I know don't touch "fake meat" because the appearance of it being "real" is enough to put them off of it, the value prop is actually a negative to that market, so you're left with an addressable market of trying to convince non-vegetarians that the ultra processed tofu and/or fungus patty that looks like a hamburger is as good as a hamburger, and as accomodating as I can be, it's just not.
> because the appearance of it being "real" is enough to put them off
Exactly the reason for me. I will go out of my way not to eat these 'lets-try-really-hard-to-be-meat' burgers. That means standard veggies burgers (the ones that most people complain about, which I have no problem with) and even salads if need be.
After a while (long while) being vegetarian becomes psychological and the mere thought of consuming meat turns my stomach.
I don't understand the business case for fake meat. Surely it has to be really niche once the novelty has worn off. The market would seem to be meat for people who don't like meat? Isn't that like making sex bots in the gender people aren't attracted to for people who aren't attracted to that gender. And its all highly processed so people who like more "natural" foods aren't going to be that interested.
Surely people who are interested in eating less or no meat would prefer to eat briam or ratatouille than some weird textured protein burger. It's not like the burger is the peak of culinary sophistication.
People that don't eat meat socialize with people who do. They go to burger places, they go to Chili's or Outback, they go to cook-outs. Chili's does not serve briam.
Just checked out the menu (I don't eat there), but Chili's do a veggie black bean burger [0], so they are obviously trying to cater to veggies. I would get that.
Tbh, I imagine it's more the taste failure then anything. I'm an avid impossible burger eater and beyond meat beef tastes not good at all. Impossible is actually somewhere in the ballpark
One commentator in that discussion pointed out Beyond Meat has not actually declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (It just may or may not be true that Beyond Meat is "headed" there, leading the commenter to complain "This isn't a news article, it's an opinion from some journalist who thinks Beyond Meat is doomed...")
They not only have to compete against direct competitors such as Impossible Burger, but tofu, seitan, and an array of already-established meat-substitute products. Which perhaps don't mimic meat quite as well as the new products, but are typically less expensive. The new products just cost too much for everyday use.
Yeah it's not like burgers have the monopoly of delicious food. There are so many good foods out there, people have been eating mostly plant based foods in both the Mediterranean and India for thousands of years. There are literally thousands of recipes from multiple cuisines around the world that don't have meat in them
> people have been eating mostly plant based foods in both the Mediterranean and India for thousands of years.
Since when have people of the mediterranean and indian been "mostly plant based" for thousands of years? Most indians eat meat ( and the percentage is increasing as indians become wealthier and can afford meat ). Most people throughout the mediterranean eat meat. Why is it that the vegan community goes out of their way to fetishize cultures and lie about them relentlessly? Just because greeks eat salad doesn't mean they are "mostly plant based".
A. I'm neither vegan nor vegetarian
B. I don't mean _now_, I mean in the previous few centuries. People in Italy, Greece, ... couldn't afford to eat meat more than a few times a year (if they were lucky), and mostly ate vegetables, a bit of cheese, lots of bread, pulses and porridge. This is why most recipes aren't really focused on "good" cuts of meat, but mince, offal, bad cuts, .. and lots of vegetables. My grandma was born a peasant in the 1920's and literally ate meat for Christmas and that was it.
About 10 years ago I became more aware that reducing my consumption of meat was good for the world. The was good for Beyond Meat’s prospects.
About 5 years ago I became more aware that reducing my consumption of ultra processed food was good for me. This was very bad for Beyond Meat’s prospects.
I suspect this experience generalizes.
I'd argue that if you didn't buy the meat, somebody else did so your argument that it was "good for the world" lacks evidence.
This statement proves too much. It's a fully generalized argument against participation in any kind of boycott.
I don't understand the point of "fake meat" burgers. Like, there are so many good recipes and ingredients out there that don't try to mimic meat and are still good and tasty. Look at Indian food, for instance. They sure found a way to make pulses and other humble ingredients tasty and delicious. Or the many Mediterranean dishes that just happen to be vegan or vegetarian, but are meatless because they simply were good enough like that.
I think fake meat wasn't really about "getting people to eat less meat", it was based on the expectation that the average person only wants to eat the same exact thing they ever did without ever widening their culinary horizons. The only problem is, that a person that's open enough to try fake meat is probably open minded enough to try new things in general, including foods that aren't served between two slices of bread.
The people that stubbornly refuse to vary their diets often won't try new stuff anyway
Fake meat is a fun transitional choice for those of us who appreciate meat's texture and flavor but not its costs to future generations.
Indian food is a delight, yet sadly my digestive system cannot handle much of it anymore, for medical reasons. To each their own.
No need to throw shade because different people have different tastes.
I agree. If you want to eat meat, fine. If you don’t want to eat meat, fine. But the whole, “Let’s trick our taste buds and eat fake meat,” thing doesn’t make much sense to me.
[dead]
Say you're on the road with a vegetarian and the only place to stop is a fast food burger place. If that fast food place has a fake meat burger on the menu then they'll get a sale from the vegetarian.
Naw. There have been vegetarian sandwich patty options forever, years before fake meat. Like tofu burgers, TVP, bulgur wheat, and others.
You can't get TVP at Burger King. The old veggie burgers tasted terrible.
I used to just get the "veggie whopper" i.e. all of the fixings, but no pattie at all. There were enough bread, mayo, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese that I got plenty of calories and felt full.
For clarity, burger king is "Impossible" not beyond. A different company.
Not everyone likes Indian food. I think most people like familiar flavors. Western people didn't grow up eating veggie-based food so I don't know why this is surprising. People just want to eat familiar things.
I like indian food. I like a good black bean burger. I also like real meat and fake meat. I wouldn’t mind eating less real meat if the fake meat was even closer and offered more pervasively.
What I've noticed, especially from visiting Singapore, is that Indian (and other South Asian) religious vegetarianism often involves finding great alternatives to meat, while Chinese religious vegetarian often involves finding imitations of meat. Both of these habits are rather strong culturally and it would probably feel kind of weird to Indian vegetarians to eat mock meat, or to Chinese vegetarians not to eat mock meat.
The big (well, it's all relative!) mock meat store in Oakland, California, is in Chinatown and their staff and clientele are mostly Chinese, and their products are mostly from Chinese-speaking regions and companies. They have dozens of highly specific mock meats so that people can avoid the religious violations associated with eating meat, while continuing to have specific dishes that they're familiar with.
I personally started out with aesthetic vegetarianism before getting into ethical vegetarianism; that means I disliked meat itself at first, so I usually haven't been excited for mock meat and sometimes have been grossed out by it. But I have a good friend who started out with ethical vegetarianism and has never gotten into aesthetic vegetarianism; he loved meat but came to feel that it was rather harmful and didn't want to be responsible for its production. He has been trying every single kind of mock meat that he can find ever since going vegetarian and has made many of them staple parts of his diet.
I doubt that there's a single way to bridge this cultural gap or resolve it decisively in favor of one tradition or the other.
I totally agree that cultures that have a native tradition of vegetarianism (Indian, Ethiopian, Eastern Orthodox Christian) have tended to come up with awesome stuff that's not based on meat at all. However, people going vegetarian from a non-vegetarian cultural and culinary background don't necessarily want to change their entire cuisine and palate as a result. For many of them, that means mock meats are an extremely appealing option!
> I totally agree that cultures that have a native tradition of vegetarianism (Indian, Ethiopian, Eastern Orthodox Christian)
None of these cultures have a "native" tradition of vegetarianism. They all started as meat eating cultures.
> have tended to come up with awesome stuff that's not based on meat at all.
Vegetarians don't need a meat alternative because vegetarians eat eggs, dairy, etc. Beyond Meat was part of the vegan movement.
Well presumably those other cuisines took a long time to develop the good recipes you mention.
It’s not really biologically normal for humans to just up and completely change their culture based on logic. So while Indians have already done the intergenerational work to have good vegan dishes, in the west we don’t have that. Making a drop in replacement that works within the existing food culture does seem like a reasonable hack.
I'd say that proportion of what you might call "vegan" food in india is quite small. Dairy-based products are everywhere in vegetarian dishes, and many (too many, imho) recipes treat paneer as the default stand-in for meat.
Yeah that’s right, I should have said vegetarian.
Food is important. Most people don't want to stop eating all the dishes they enjoy and just switch to Indian food. People lie on a spectrum of openness to new things. Developing a high quality direct alternative to a foundational yet highly fraught ingredient of the American diet makes sense to me. Even a bit less beef mitigates the near daily amputations by workers at processing plants or horrors we are adding to with climate annihilation.
Personally, Impossible and Beyond materially improved my life by adding to it. I enjoy their products, and still make plenty of Indian food.
[dead]
Beyond developed a novelty product that focused entirely on the aesthetics of meat. But let's be real. Their products taste like crap and them scaling up with that awful recipe was never going to work.
The reaper is coming for Impossible soon, but at least in the tiniest possible way, they at least kinda taste like meat.
Regardless, this whole industry is built on hype. It's never going to be cheaper, healthier, or tastier than just a simple black bean burger.
their product doesn't taste like crap. Unless you meant it tasted like crap to you? I liked it as the 'meat' in a veg chilli for example.
Beyond Meat Denies Filing For Bankruptcy In New Statement
https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/beyond-meat-denies...
I would pay them to go bankrupt, but thats it
Then send them a multi-million dollar offer
They always struck me as a weird niche, as vegetarian food for non-vegetarians.
Most vegetarians I know don't touch "fake meat" because the appearance of it being "real" is enough to put them off of it, the value prop is actually a negative to that market, so you're left with an addressable market of trying to convince non-vegetarians that the ultra processed tofu and/or fungus patty that looks like a hamburger is as good as a hamburger, and as accomodating as I can be, it's just not.
> because the appearance of it being "real" is enough to put them off
Exactly the reason for me. I will go out of my way not to eat these 'lets-try-really-hard-to-be-meat' burgers. That means standard veggies burgers (the ones that most people complain about, which I have no problem with) and even salads if need be.
After a while (long while) being vegetarian becomes psychological and the mere thought of consuming meat turns my stomach.
[dead]
I don't understand the business case for fake meat. Surely it has to be really niche once the novelty has worn off. The market would seem to be meat for people who don't like meat? Isn't that like making sex bots in the gender people aren't attracted to for people who aren't attracted to that gender. And its all highly processed so people who like more "natural" foods aren't going to be that interested.
Surely people who are interested in eating less or no meat would prefer to eat briam or ratatouille than some weird textured protein burger. It's not like the burger is the peak of culinary sophistication.
There are those like me who eat meat, like the taste of meat, but think for health reasons they should be eating less meat.
People that don't eat meat socialize with people who do. They go to burger places, they go to Chili's or Outback, they go to cook-outs. Chili's does not serve briam.
Just checked out the menu (I don't eat there), but Chili's do a veggie black bean burger [0], so they are obviously trying to cater to veggies. I would get that.
[0]: https://www.chilis.com/menu/big-mouth-burgers/veggie-santa-f...
Tbh, I imagine it's more the taste failure then anything. I'm an avid impossible burger eater and beyond meat beef tastes not good at all. Impossible is actually somewhere in the ballpark
Dupe
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44860477
One commentator in that discussion pointed out Beyond Meat has not actually declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (It just may or may not be true that Beyond Meat is "headed" there, leading the commenter to complain "This isn't a news article, it's an opinion from some journalist who thinks Beyond Meat is doomed...")
They not only have to compete against direct competitors such as Impossible Burger, but tofu, seitan, and an array of already-established meat-substitute products. Which perhaps don't mimic meat quite as well as the new products, but are typically less expensive. The new products just cost too much for everyday use.
Yeah it's not like burgers have the monopoly of delicious food. There are so many good foods out there, people have been eating mostly plant based foods in both the Mediterranean and India for thousands of years. There are literally thousands of recipes from multiple cuisines around the world that don't have meat in them
> people have been eating mostly plant based foods in both the Mediterranean and India for thousands of years.
Since when have people of the mediterranean and indian been "mostly plant based" for thousands of years? Most indians eat meat ( and the percentage is increasing as indians become wealthier and can afford meat ). Most people throughout the mediterranean eat meat. Why is it that the vegan community goes out of their way to fetishize cultures and lie about them relentlessly? Just because greeks eat salad doesn't mean they are "mostly plant based".
A. I'm neither vegan nor vegetarian B. I don't mean _now_, I mean in the previous few centuries. People in Italy, Greece, ... couldn't afford to eat meat more than a few times a year (if they were lucky), and mostly ate vegetables, a bit of cheese, lots of bread, pulses and porridge. This is why most recipes aren't really focused on "good" cuts of meat, but mince, offal, bad cuts, .. and lots of vegetables. My grandma was born a peasant in the 1920's and literally ate meat for Christmas and that was it.
The meat that we moot is the doom that we deem.