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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Chimpanzees eat plenty of meat. They particularly enjoy hunting and eating monkeys, for example.
> not every cow is only fed with grass, and what about that grass, has it been treated, etc...
the (low) possibility of mad cow always lurks in my mind when discussing things like this. I have a deep fear of prions.
The much more common scenario is the use of growth hormones in cows - to the point that pro athletes traveling/competing in Central and South America are instructed to avoid beef altogether as they later test positive in their drug tests for anabolic steroids.
I personally opt for meat over vegetarian options when given the choice to make sure I get sufficient protein (I do track and I struggle to get enough when eating vegetarian) but I still would vastly prefer more meat alternatives. I'm always very impressed by the Beyond options and I'm glad it's very slowly becoming more mainstream. I remember the first time I'd had an Impossible Burger was in San francisco about 10 years ago - a group of friends and I were talking about this "crazy meatless burger that still feels/tastes like meat" and we searched out a restaurant that offered it. The fact that national fast food chains are offering it now is indicative of the progress being made in society and normalizing the meatless alternatives.
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.
> And for almost all of that 10%, beef was a luxury good
This is simply not true. As soon as we were able, we ate almost all megafauna to extinction. Once we mastered pastoralism, peoples who engaged in it continued eating high-meat diets. Even for more settled peoples, going up to medieval or colonial times, beef or other meat was often present in a daily stew in some form.
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.
Not if you understand how Black Angus turns into that patty, or, more accurately, how Black Angus turns into Black Angus.
OTOH, plenty do attempt to source that single natural ingredient from somewhere that produces it as it was produced at the dawn of man. Unfortunately you'll find most such product claims are scams.
I stopped eating premium beef when I was old enough (5) to understand the meat packers' auction paid about the same for a dead cow we collected from the field as a live one. And ours were 100% field raised never barned, with few enough cattle rotating through fields that every field was primarily used to farm hay we sold to the mass producers.
IOW, can't get more natural, and can't get healthier cattle. If you wanted to eat one, you'd eat one of ours. And still, the packers didn't care if the carcass was alive or inexplicably dead.
> the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man.
The fact that meat comes from a single source doesn’t make it automatically healthier, so is ricin, cyanide and polonium yet I wouldn’t include any of them in my diet. Plant based protein is healthier than its animal counterpart and this is proven by proper scientific studies, not by Tik-tok stars or nutrition “experts”.
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.
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.
I know a few fitness people and they've all moved past being overly worried about an ingredient list that includes words with multiple syllables. On the contrary, they usually seem pretty content to find out what all the oddities on an ingredient list mean.
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.
"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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
589 comments
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Chimpanzees eat plenty of meat. They particularly enjoy hunting and eating monkeys, for example.
> not every cow is only fed with grass, and what about that grass, has it been treated, etc...
the (low) possibility of mad cow always lurks in my mind when discussing things like this. I have a deep fear of prions.
The much more common scenario is the use of growth hormones in cows - to the point that pro athletes traveling/competing in Central and South America are instructed to avoid beef altogether as they later test positive in their drug tests for anabolic steroids.
I personally opt for meat over vegetarian options when given the choice to make sure I get sufficient protein (I do track and I struggle to get enough when eating vegetarian) but I still would vastly prefer more meat alternatives. I'm always very impressed by the Beyond options and I'm glad it's very slowly becoming more mainstream. I remember the first time I'd had an Impossible Burger was in San francisco about 10 years ago - a group of friends and I were talking about this "crazy meatless burger that still feels/tastes like meat" and we searched out a restaurant that offered it. The fact that national fast food chains are offering it now is indicative of the progress being made in society and normalizing the meatless alternatives.
> Looking at chimpanzee diets, I don't think our common ancestor was regularly eating burgers
Chimps literally eat other monkeys and even cannibalize other troops... They definitely eat meat.
> And for almost all of that 10%, beef was a luxury good
This is simply not true. As soon as we were able, we ate almost all megafauna to extinction. Once we mastered pastoralism, peoples who engaged in it continued eating high-meat diets. Even for more settled peoples, going up to medieval or colonial times, beef or other meat was often present in a daily stew in some form.
So yes, cattle (and their ancestors, and their relatives) have been human food since the dawn of man.
OTOH, plenty do attempt to source that single natural ingredient from somewhere that produces it as it was produced at the dawn of man. Unfortunately you'll find most such product claims are scams.
I stopped eating premium beef when I was old enough (5) to understand the meat packers' auction paid about the same for a dead cow we collected from the field as a live one. And ours were 100% field raised never barned, with few enough cattle rotating through fields that every field was primarily used to farm hay we sold to the mass producers.
IOW, can't get more natural, and can't get healthier cattle. If you wanted to eat one, you'd eat one of ours. And still, the packers didn't care if the carcass was alive or inexplicably dead.
Something that feels and tastes like a reasonable substitute for meat but doesn't jack up my cholesterol is very much appreciated.
> the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man.
The fact that meat comes from a single source doesn’t make it automatically healthier, so is ricin, cyanide and polonium yet I wouldn’t include any of them in my diet. Plant based protein is healthier than its animal counterpart and this is proven by proper scientific studies, not by Tik-tok stars or nutrition “experts”.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
This is a good filler product.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
So like, sure it's fine, but it is already in a tough competition with other plant based foods.
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.
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.
>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.
> high-protein fizzy drink line
That is the plan?
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.
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.