Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

https://agfundernews.com/beyond-meat-signs-global-supply-deals-with-mcdonalds-yum-brands.html

by adrian_mrd • 5 years ago

1105 847 5 years ago

drewg1232• 5 years ago

This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans.

Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the documentary "Cowspiricy", or Mark Rober's "Feeding Bill Gates a Fake Burger to save the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k-V3ESHcfA)

partiallypro• 5 years ago

Are there stats to back up that non-vegans begin consuming more vegan based meals if they have the option? And I mean more than once. A consumer might try it but then go back to normal. At there good stats on repeat buying on a large scale?

space_fountain• 5 years ago

I'm also interested in any stats people can bring up, but the proliferation of realistic fake meat has absolutely led to me eating less meat

8ytecoder• 5 years ago

Every meal without meat is a win in my book. I could be wrong - I assume most Americans have meat at least twice a day if not all three meals and also snack on jerky and other meat/dairy products. So any change will be a win.

RandallBrown3• 5 years ago

I have friends that prefer the Impossible breakfast sandwiches at Starbucks to their meat versions so that's what they order.

jdlshore• 5 years ago

Anecdotally, environmental concerns led me to consume less beef and to try the Impossible burger. I liked it better than beef and now I'll order it rather than a burger.

throwaway0a5e2• 5 years ago

"Conversions" and other voluntary consumption where people specifically pick the beef they want doesn't really matter to the bigger picture.

Plant based meat is a rounding error until it gets good enough (at an equivalent or better price to ground beef) that McDonalds and Walmart can cut their low end products without anyone noticing or caring. People don't understand just much low end beef sells compared to the mid range products people might replace with plants (at present). In my experience at the foodservice level it's easily 50:1, maybe even 100:1.

maxfurman• 5 years ago

There's an assumption here that, at scale, non-meat options will be cheaper than raising cows. If the vegan option is $1 and the meat option is $2, many consumers will choose vegan. These are big ifs, of course, but it seems possible to me.

loceng2• 5 years ago

There will certainly be people who are indifferent and eat whatever, and be lead/manipulated via the propaganda that "vegan is healthier" - which arguably isn't true - but eating high-quality, fatty, red meat is healthy; it's the other junk people also eat with red meat that causes problems.

jdavis7033• 5 years ago

I’m just a single data point... But I’m not vegan, but I eat fake meats multiple times a week. In fact I haven’t eaten any real meat in 3 weeks.

throwawayboise3• 5 years ago

I'd like to know that too. I've never tried fake meat, and have no desire to. If I want to eat meat, I want real meat. I don't trust industrially processed synthetic foods, and I'd think we'd have learned by now that they are not worthy of our trust.

arcturus17• 5 years ago

I’ll eat fake meat from time to time but I still eat real meat the vast majority of time. The main reasons are that it’s only distributed in restaurants where I live, it is less protein-dense (I lift heavy) and I’m not 100% sure about its safety. But I would be willing to eat more of it as these issues are solved.

nicoburns2• 5 years ago

I don't have any statistics to share with you, but in the last couple of years pretty much every mainstream restaurant chain in the UK has added at least one vegan option and few vegetarian options. And I frequently hear non-vegetarians saying that they sometimes choose those options (either because they feel like it's a more ethical choice, or simply because they like that particular menu option).

Some people seem to consider meat a necessary part of every meal. But that number of a relatively small percentage in my experience.

GVIrish• 5 years ago

My personal anecdote is that I've shifted most of my meat consumption away from red meat to Beyond Meat burgers, chicken, and fish. I only eat steak as a special occasion now where I used to have steak regularly.

If there are more meat substitutes out there that taste good and aren't exorbitantly priced I'll absolutely eat more of them.

metabagel2• 5 years ago

What you’re referring to are sometimes called “flexitarians” - people who will often choose a vegetarian option if it is available, but who will eat meat if no suitable vegetarian option is available.

brightball• 5 years ago

IMO this is the better solution to methane...

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/941030964/adding-red-seaweed-...

GavinMcG• 5 years ago

Headline is "Adding Red Seaweed To Cow Feed Could Cut Bovine Flatulence"

DamnYuppie2• 5 years ago

I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages. It looks like today we have around 98 million head of cattle in the US. Historically we had bison in excess of conservatively 60 million. This doesn't even begin to count all the animals in Africa. Overall wide life is declining.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/194297/total-number-of-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison

The point is the amount of large mammal farts, it appears to be burps, going on now is probably not that much higher than it always has been. We have merely swapped out one large untamed mammal for a more domesticated one.

EDIT: I should point out I am not advocating for more cows. I don't think we should be clear cutting forests to raise more of them. Yet I don't think we should be running to get rid of all of them either. Historically beef was quite expensive and was usually reserved for rare occasions or the very wealthy. I can see a path forward where we keep the herd size constant and let prices rise. This would obviously drive people to look for cheaper substitutes.

mikepurvis2• 5 years ago

large mammal farts going on now is probably not that much higher than it always has been

I believe a big part of it has to do with the feedlot diet— when they're eating a high-calorie diet of mostly corn/grain instead of their natural diet of grass, it puts their digestive system into overdrive.

EDIT: I looked into it a bit more after posting this, and it looks like it's not clear-cut— for example, it takes a cow a lot longer to reach slaughter weight eating grass, so even if they're belching less during that time, it's a long enough time that it may be a wash, or even worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/climate/beef-cattle-metha...

EDIT 2: Here's a piece which makes the original case, acknowledging greater direct emissions but claiming a savings that makes up for it from soil sequestration due to grazing: http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-gre...

tmpz22• 5 years ago

If we can reduce any source with little to no consequences we should do it. The point is we're over capacity because we've added petroleum and other sources, namely large container ships that aren't going to be constrained anytime soon.

AlexandrB• 5 years ago

This would only be relevant if all other things were equal. If we can cut methane emissions to below "historical averages" it will at least buy us some time to get CO2 emissions in check.

rictic2• 5 years ago

Every greenhouse gas counts, whether it's part of the preexisting baseline or something recent we started emitting. The goal isn't a return to how things were, the goal is to keep the temperature from climbing too high too quickly.

xnx2• 5 years ago

Burps, not farts, are the primary source of methane: https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-methane-so...

jdavis7033• 5 years ago

It’s not just cow farts. Raising and killing a whole cow is an inefficient way to extract calories from plants. Even chicken would be more efficient.

contravariant• 5 years ago

The best I can figure out there has been a massive increase in global methane levels in the last millenia or so.

I suppose we could argue about the source but livestock is the most obvious candidate.

Edit: Okay turns out fossil fuels are also responsible fro some non-negligible part of the methane emissions, and it's not just livestock but all agriculture and the resulting waste.

mleonhard3• 5 years ago

Today we are not choosing between raising meat animals and restoring land to its pre-industrialization state. So the original GHG emission rate of ancient animals is not important to our decision. We are choosing between raising meat animals and raising crops. Therefore the GHG emissions rate of modern meat animals is important.

telchar• 5 years ago

Prior to the industrial revolution the CO2 in the atmosphere was significantly less than today, around or under 250 ppm, so a bit of methane wasn't a problem. Now even the same amount of methane when added to the 410 or so ppm CO2 we have today and it becomes a problem. Of we can reduce atmospheric methane it takes off a bit of the pressure on us to reduce CO2 levels.

pcrh• 5 years ago

You have a very good point!

I has also been shown that under the right conditions grazing lands can actually sequester carbon [1].

So there is no a priori argument against meat from the point of view of climate effects, though there are obviously better and worse practices.

[1] http://www.fao.org/3/i1880e/i1880e00.htm

h0l0cube2• 5 years ago

I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages.

It's more that this wasn't so much a problem until we added the 80%+ other emissions on top (and the deforestation/water use/transportation/diversion of food crops/human population).

zests2• 5 years ago

Think about it. Cows release carbon based green house gasses. Where does that carbon originally come from? Plants absorbing carbon based green house gasses. I'm not saying that they cancel out, but there must be some consumption of carbon from the atmosphere in order for cows to produce carbon.

If you're an environmentalist trying to convince people to support your cause, you aren't going to talk about the carbon that raising cows removes from the air. You're only going to mention the carbon that gets put back in the atmosphere. That way, the problem seems like a bigger deal. This is not a slight on environmentalists -- its just politics.

m3at• 5 years ago

Wild life mammals are simply negligible compared to our livestock: https://xkcd.com/1338/

lr4444lr• 5 years ago

From what I read, the contribution of factory farming feed is substantial. Dunno what bison and African wildlife were eating but cows fed a diet that had even a small amount of kelp reduced the methane in their flatus substantially.

runarberg• 5 years ago

I’m gonna guess that wild grazers get predated on by a much more varied species than just carbon polluting humans and their domesticated wolfs. In the wild a bison might get eaten by a pack of wolfs or it might live long and die of old age and be eaten by a host of different scavenges, as well as insects and fungi. All supplying other niches in the ecosystem. I’m guessing that in the wild the methane that gets emitted by grazing herd animals is offset somewhere else in the ecosystem by the niches which these animals create by their behavior.

It might be that allocating all of these grazing animals for just one species destroys most other parts of ecosystems which would otherwise have adjusted for the greenhouse gasses emitted by them.

Or who knows, maybe we fluctuate between warm periods in our ice ages because enough grazing animals have farted enough to start a runaway global warming effects... though I doubt it.

_9omd• 5 years ago

I think a lot of what you're saying makes sense. People tend to lump all types of raising cows together, when it's really only the factory farming type or rainforest clearing kind that needs to be stopped. There's a tremendous amount of dry or hilly land that isn't suitable for other types of agriculture, so it really makes sense to raise cattle on these lands in low density. I drive by a lot of these places regularly, and seeing cows on them looks extremely natural and the animals seem very content.

So we should outlaw factory farming and clearing rainforest for cattle, which will drastically cut the supply and allow prices to settle much higher so it's more of a luxury than an every day thing.

abalone• 5 years ago

This is so misinformed. Much cattle production is in South America yet you cite only US figures which is less than 10% of headcount.[1] Even the US bison figures you cite predate the massive rise in industrial CO2 emissions, greatly reducing our budget. And you claim “wild life” is declining without sources — commercial cattle still number > 1B worldwide.

One item worth noting is that the decline in U.S. inventory since 2008 – 3.1 million beef cows – has been met with an opposite expansion in Brazil of almost 4 million beef cows during the same period.

[1] https://www.progressivecattle.com/topics/management/what-us-...

ssijak3• 5 years ago

Other problem is forest and jungle clearings to make land for cattle farming. Mostly in Brazil in Amazon but elsewere too.

shafyy3• 5 years ago

Sorry, but there are around 1.5 BILLION cattle in the world, and 300 million are estimated to be slaughtered each year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle

madacol• 5 years ago

TL;DR: Including land use and crops production, livestock and fisheries account for ~15% of GHG emmissions.

You might want to read this https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#whe... and maybe this too https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#food-producti...

Highlights:

there are massive differences in the GHG emissions of different foods: producing a kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalents). While peas emits just 1 kilogram per kg.
For most foods – and particularly the largest emitters – most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green), and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers – both organic (“manure management”) and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods.
Food is responsible for approximately 26% of global GHG emissions.
Livestock & fisheries account for 31% of food emissions ... This 31% of emissions relates to on-farm ‘production’ emissions only: it does not include land use change or supply chain emissions from the production of crops for animal feed: these figures are included separately in the other categories.
21% of food’s emissions comes from crop production for direct human consumption, and 6% comes from the production of animal feed.
Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions. Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).

So including land use and crops production, livestock and fisheries account for ~15% of GHG emmissions

bjoli3• 5 years ago

The ecosystem the bison were a part of sequestered carbon. They moved over a huge area and grazed just enough for the soil to store carbon. Intensive farming depletes the soil, actually releasing co2 into the air. I don't know why most people replying to you have failed to point this out. Game meat is generally CO2e neutral.

You can of course still find cow meat that comes from farming that sequester enough co2 to mitigate or offset the emissions, but that kind of production would not sustain current consumption levels.

In my home country, very few areas are suitable for intensive grazing from a sequesterin POW. Only about 10% of the current land used for grazing animals sequester any meaningful amount of CO2.

oh, and I saw someone posted the xkcd comic as a reply to you. That one is pretty telling.

joshxyz• 5 years ago

Iirc dinosaur farts caused the ice age [citation needed].

PeteZa2• 5 years ago

Apologies for linking to reddit but the full paper is available, not just the summary. https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb/comments/lz9wj8/incredible_new...

This paper shows that humans are evolutionary carnivores. There are 25 points ranging from various fields in science. Our increased brain sizes and large fat stores in comparison to other primates are just some of the clues. We have different colon/intestine ratios because we spend less time fermenting plants and simply digest meats better. Our higher pH in our stomachs also points to it.

Yes, we can eat plants. But it's not optimal. And we're worse at doing it than our evolutionary cousins.

macintux• 5 years ago

I always assumed the inefficient grain and water requirements alone would make it worthwhile.

ngngngng3• 5 years ago

Raising cattle can easily become a net negative to carbon emissions if cows are given slightly more space to graze and moved around more often. If all cattle were raised in this way there would be slightly less cattle production but a far more positive environmental impact than if we all switched to vegan "meat".

https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grass...

loceng2• 5 years ago

There needs to be a proper discussion, debate, to break apart ideologies that are perpetuating misinformation or just simply not taking into account the whole ecosystem; the documentary Sacred Cow seemed to do a good job to explain it.

silicon24012• 5 years ago

less cattle production

This idea would lose the interest of anybody with influence over cattle production right here. It's almost impossible to make people simply want less, but it's more feasible to make them want something different than what they want today.

pat2man• 5 years ago

I think both solutions work hand in hand. We replace the lower quality meath with vegan alternatives. This allows meat producers to focus on higher value, grass fed products. So we still eat steak but frozen processed meat patties are replaced with plan alternatives.

drewg1232• 5 years ago

That study seems to be comparing cropland to pasture. The problem is that the tradeoff is not between cropland and pasture, but pasture and forest. Eg: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/02/revealed...

Due to increasing demand for meat, we have people burning the forest and releasing all the carbon sequestered in the trees, and reducing the efficiency of the land as a carbon sink going forward.

duckerude• 5 years ago

The 2017 data showed that converting annual cropland to perennial pasture, under holistic and regenerative grazing practices, had the effect of storing more carbon in the soil than cows emit during their lives.

Does this continue storing more carbon, or does it just store a constant amount of carbon? It reads to me like it's a one-off reduction in carbon that's already cancelled out after a couple of years.

asoneth• 5 years ago

The linked research is interesting and may be slightly more nuanced than your summary. From their executive summary:

"The WOP system effectively captures soil carbon, offsetting a majority of the emissions related to beef production. The largest emission sources — from cattle digestion and manure — are highly uncertain. We believe the results shown here are on the conservative side. Accounting for soil carbon capture is not yet standard practice and the results may meet with challenges, such as on ensuring long-term storage. In the best case, the WOP beef production may have a net positive effect on climate. The results show great potential."

It looks like their beef production does produce carbon (and methane) emissions, they just pair that with the carbon sequestration due to their land use. I appreciate that they did this research and published the results. It's an interesting argument.

But I'm unsure how well it scales at a societal level. For one thing there's the opportunity cost of using so much land for a single pound of beef. More significantly it seems like one could use their logic to pair any activity with enough soil-based carbon capture to argue that it's now a carbon neutral activity.

For example, one could argue that dirt biking has "net negative carbon emissions" if you subtract their tailpipe emissions from the carbon capture from thousands of acres of forested trails.

shafyy3• 5 years ago

No, just no. White Oak Pastures has been debunked by real science many times, e.g. here: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/163431/

com2kid2• 5 years ago

I agree that this is important, and less meat consumption is good, but I am kind of upset that the entire American culinary experience is being reduced to "burgers, pizza, and fried chicken."

I say that because most of the articles on meat alternatives are written from the perspective of "if only Americans can stop eating hamburgers!"

First off, in terms of global solutions, that isn't going to fly. Try going to Italy and telling people "we've replaced all your meat, with a ground beef alternative!" and see how pissed people get. Countries around the world have culinary traditions older than America itself. Many of these traditional preparations of various cuts of meat are a huge part of culture and history.

Second off, I, an American, don't even eat hamburgers[1] more than once or twice a year. And I'm not going to switch all my meat eating over to meat alternative hamburgers.

Of course replacing some meat is good, my main complaint is how so many articles reduce American food to just a few categories.

I have the same problem when friends come to visit from overseas, or even friends who've been in America for awhile (sometimes years!) who have no idea that American food is anything other than burgers and pizza.

[1] I eat sausages a bit more frequently, which I could fill with a plant based alternative.

jimktrains2• 5 years ago

Countries around the world have culinary traditions older than America itself. Many of these traditional preparations of various cuts of meat are a huge part of culture and history.

Many of these traditions include "new world" ingredients such as tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, corn, squash, some beans, &c that wouldn't become common in europe or asia until the 16th or 17th century. While still older than the founding of the united states, they're still "newer" than many people realize. These new ingredients were incorporated into older traditions just as new ingredients will be. Noöne will force it on anyone, but people will experiment and find culinary and economic reasons to use new ingredients.

lemmsjid• 5 years ago

As a fellow American, I also just eat a few hamburgers per year. I actually prefer non meat burgers to regular, though I love high quality meat (though I don't it it very often). I like to primary source stuff and can't find a hard, verified number in my limited Googling, but as far as I can tell our consumption is incredibly low compared to the per capita average (over a hundred per year, into the multi hundreds per year depending on region). The key is not to get people who are eating 2 per year down to 0, but to get people eating hundreds per year down to, I dunno, 10? Either way we can picture a sustainable economy in which high quality plant based meals are cheap, and then everyone gets their high quality meat meals less frequently and for an amount of money that is commensurate with their ecological impact.

dheera• 5 years ago

Second off, I, an American, don't even eat hamburgers[1] more than once or twice a year. And I'm not going to switch all my meat eating over to meat alternative hamburgers.

You're also likely in a privileged class of Americans. Unfortunately the US government indirectly subsidizes meat. Hamburgers and fried meat of sorts are staples of the low-income class. The meat consumption in that class is off the charts, and at extremely unhealthy levels for both the body and the planet.

Ideally, the government should be subsidizing a variety of healthy vegetables for human consumption, not corn (which indirectly subsidizes both meat and HFCS). That policy change alone would fix a lot of nutritional deficiencies, heart disease, obesity, and numerous other problems.

input_sh2• 5 years ago

"we've replaced all your meat, with a ground beef alternative!"

I'm sorry but who ever says anything about replacing all meat? It's more about having a readily available alternative and starting to think of meat as a luxury instead of it being a part of every meal.

h0l0cube2• 5 years ago

I am kind of upset that the entire American culinary experience is being reduced to "burgers, pizza, and fried chicken."

I think the reason why burgers and other processed foods are the first to be tackled by fake meat start-ups, is that processed foods are easier to imitate, and quite likely burgers have the largest consumption of any processed food on the market. From both a profitability and environmental standpoint, any small win here, has an outsized impact.

ip262• 5 years ago

I also eat few burgers, but Americans average 3 burgers a week- and even more chicken than beef.

So more or less, "burgers, pizza, and fried chicken" is not that far off.

lovemenot2• 5 years ago

It's not only about American foods. Arguably a bigger impact might happen in China, which has been reacting to a Swine fever that has made pork - a staple - in many cases too expensive or unavailable.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Food-Beverage/Chinese-start...

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Japan-s-pla...

markwkw• 5 years ago

I don’t think it’s a problem of articles. It’s a problem of reality, of emerging american culture. Majority of people are eating burgers, chicken and pizza plus perhaps some common mexican dishes. If you asked random people in the street: what american dishes are there? would their answer be different from the above?

helsinkiandrew2• 5 years ago

You're in the minority though - there appears to be 50 billion hamburgers eating in the US every year which is about 150 per person.

Meat substitutes are a transitionary item - for those used to eating meat. I've been vegan for 35 years and rarely cook with them (tempeh and tofu are the only things that come close). I get plenty of protein from vegetables, beans etc. and the thought of eating a mock meat just doesn't appeal to me (I'll occasionally eat a burger when out but I find Beyond burgers taste like the burgers sold in cheap fast food joints smell like.

ricardobayes5• 5 years ago

No need to go that far, just try replacing cheese. There's surprisingly few Italian food items left.

hannob• 5 years ago

Unfortunately the documentary Cowspiracy is operating with massively exaggerated numbers (it claims meat is responsible for more than 50% of ghg emissions, it's explained on the wikipedia article of the film).

Real numbers from credible sources are that greenhouse gas emissions from the meat and dairy industry are around 15%. Which is large enough to take this problem seriously, but it's still far away from those claims.

I think this is harming the case. The problem is big enough to be passionate about fake meat. No need for exaggeration.

nightski2• 5 years ago

The 15% is globally also. In the US it's as low as 7% (all of agriculture is 10% - directly from the EPA website).

We buy a 1/4 a cow from a local farmer once every six months. It's a pretty low impact way eat meat.

jredwards• 5 years ago

I watched Cowspiracy. It was not convincing. It used numbers that seemed wildly exaggerated on their face, even before doing follow-on research. It also seemed designed to be emotionally manipulative more than informative. Maybe I don't watch enough documentaries, but it had a youtube conspiracy theorist vibe to it, rather than a measured, investigative approach.

elktea5• 5 years ago

The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant and the environmental impacts have been greatly exaggerated. See below:

Regarding carbon: "removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions. Similarly, removing all dairy would lead to a reduction of just 0.7%. At the same time, both transitions would create domestic deficiencies in critically limiting nutrients [White & Hall 2017; Liebe et al. 2020], which is not unexpected given that Animal Sourced Foods are valuable sources of essential nutrition [see elsewhere].

and methane: "As argued above, this is not wishful thinking as there is still ample potential for mitigation of biogenic methane in global food systems. Moreover, the global cattle population has not been increasing during the last decade, making its contribution to global warming debatable [Shahbandeh 2020]. It is, however, true that methane has nonetheless been suddenly increasing since 2007. Yet, this can be ascribed to a multitude of potential reasons, incl. geological and fossil fuel emissions, wetlands, rice farming, and landfills [Gramling 2016; Nisbet et al. 2016; Alvarez et al. 2018; Rasmussen 2018; Etiope & Schwietzke 2019; Malik 2021], or a decrease in hydroxyl radical levels, the main sink for atmospheric methane [Turner et al. 2017]

https://aleph-2020.blogspot.com/2019/06/greenhouse-gas-emiss...

bweitzman• 5 years ago

How are you comparing nutritional value between meat and plant products? There are literally hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people that have been eating vegetarian diets for their entire lives, and these types of diets have been popular for millennia.

maelito3• 5 years ago

removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions.

100% can be split in so many small sums. Each percent is worth taking.

maelito3• 5 years ago

making its contribution to global warming debatable

The problem is not only rising emissions in the Last decade, our emissions in 2010 was already way over the climate budgets.

sailingparrot• 5 years ago

Livestock is a real problem. Using US numbers, which has one of the most efficient livestock management in the world make those numbers not too bad at ~4% (that's still a lot, let's be clear), but when you look worldwide the share of GHG attributed to livestock is 14.5%, that's definitely bad [1].

Even if Beyond Meat will have a bigger impact in the US to begin with, this will have a worldwide impact.

[1] https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/using-global-emission-s...

Spivak4• 5 years ago

I'm always kinda confused when people argue that 3.3% of literally all emissions produced by every activity we as humans engage in seem like it's a small thing. There's not gonna be some magic bullet that will reduce our national emissions by 45% or anything. It's all the result of a bunch of small things added together. And we're at the point where plant based meats and dairy substitutes are good enough in a lot of different use-cases.

If we cut our use of animal products to just the dishes that really demand it then we're already way better off. Use milk for your baking, not your cereal. Don't feel bad about having a steak but maybe try the veggie chicken nuggets when you get fast food.

nickelcitymario• 5 years ago

The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided.

This seems to presume two things:

1) That vegans and vegetarians are primarily doing it for the environment.

2) That vegans and vegetarians can't do basic math.

To the first point, I'd be fully supportive of plant-based diets even if the only reason was concern over the treatment of the animals themselves. The focus on the environmental benefits is really quite new. Vegetarianism has historically been about animal rights/welfare and/or a commitment to non-violence. The environmental benefits are simply the cherry on the cake.

To the second point, you say meat provides "far more" nutritional value than any plant. Maybe, maybe not. (I think "not", but I'm open to being wrong about that.) Nutrition is one of those weird fields in science where there's not a whole lot of agreement about anything. However, the vast majority of nutritionists and doctors are far more concerned with the lack of fruits in vegetables in the popular diet than they are with the lack of meat.

The environmental benefits have probably been exaggerated, but growing, distributing, and consuming vegetables is obviously less resource-intensive and less wasteful than meat. I'm somewhat shocked that this could be a controversial statement. I'm NOT saying the benefits are so high as to, say, "save the world" by going veg. There are plenty of people who make this claim, and I'm very suspicious of it.

But that's very different from thinking the entire movement is misguided. EVERY movement exaggerates their claims. That doesn't make them misguided, simply prone to hyperbole.

(On a side note: I'm not vegetarian. I simply agree with those who are.)

kevin_thibedeau• 5 years ago

Artificial meat doesn't have to be plant based. It's entirely possible that we could grow synthetic meat at scale with the same nutritional profile as the real thing.

mdorazio• 5 years ago

I'm less inclined to believe a blog post than I am to believe published & cited articles. Most estimates I've found put overall GHG from diet at about 15-20% of total per capita. And sources like [1] indicate that switching to a plant-based diet cuts that number in half for western countries (the UK in this study). That's 3x your number. Granted, meat substitutes are higher on GHG than eating straight plant-based meals, so it's probably more like a reduction of 3-4% from switching to Beyond or Impossible. But as with any GHG discussion, you have to consider what's actually feasible to do (ex. changing dietary components) vs. really hard (ex. reducing energy inputs to manufacturing) and optimize for the former.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1169-1

Bang2Bay2• 5 years ago

May be anecdotal, but four generations prior to me and myself have all be vegetarians with no sign of deficiencies. and many lived 90 yrs + . and I know many families who ate meat only once a month or approx '10 meals a year'. meat is over hyped.

akiselev• 5 years ago

Regarding carbon: "removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions. Similarly, removing all dairy would lead to a reduction of just 0.7%.

Methane (molecule for molecule) contributes far more to the greenhouse effect than CO2 so without knowing how much of those gases are from transportation versus digestion, it's hard to tell how much actual impact it has. Focusing on the GHG statistic also ignores the many other ecological effects of animal agriculture like runoff and forest clearing that has significant effects on our carbon stores and oxygen producers like plankton and trees.

At the same time, both transitions would create domestic deficiencies in critically limiting nutrients [White & Hall 2017; Liebe et al. 2020], which is not unexpected given that Animal Sourced Foods are valuable sources of essential nutrition [see elsewhere].

Cows need more essential amino acids from their diets than humans do and the overlap between the two needs is almost 100%. They can't synthesize atomic minerals so they're just a delivery device for nutrients we'd get from other sources anyway. Obviously I'm not suggesting we all switch to a diet of alfa alfa but the whole point of the climate crisis is that our way of life is unsustainable; something has to change and I think most people rather it be diet, even if we lean more on synthetic alternatives, than the total population. This argument made sense a hundred years ago when overwintering was a real concern and transportation wasn't fast enough to deliver unspoiled fresh food so people had to convert inedible plants to edible food.

(I'm ignoring the difficulty of getting a large group of people to switch away from culturally important or locally available staples, which is what that nutrition argument hinges on, because that seems to be the weakest link in the face of an existential threat)

diego_moita2• 5 years ago

Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant

Bullshit, the kind of lies that the meat industry loves to spin.

Nutritional value is not one single measurable thing. And even protein contents (meat's most common nutrient) when measured per gram can be higher in soy and derivatives than in some meats (e.g: pork but and shoulder). When measured by calories other legumes (beans, chickpeas, lupini) beat most meats.

The only nutrient not often found in plants is B12 vitamin. But it can be bought cheap as a nutritional supplement.

omgwtfbyobbq3• 5 years ago

YMMV, but it's much more than 2.6% in the US. Livestock is 40% of of ag's GHG emissions.

https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventoryexplorer/#agriculture...

And ag is ~10% of US emissions

https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventoryexplorer/#allsectors/...

So eliminating livestock would reduce emissions by 4%.

With that said, 4% is still low, but it doesn't account for all the GHG emissions needed to grow feed for livestock, nor does it account for other things like transportation of that feed, energy used in processing by the industrial sector, and so on.

TazeTSchnitzel• 5 years ago

Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant

Meat provides far less nutritional value than was collectively contained in the plants used to produce it.

tryitnow• 5 years ago

Those items just address the carbon issue (and 2.6% is still quite a bit), they don't address the issue of the massive land footprint that livestock requires.

Where's the evidence that meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant?

And there have been a lot of studies showing that high consumption of red meat and processed meats are not helpful to health.

I'm a meat eater and I'd love to feel better about my love of steak and burgers, but sadly I just don't see the evidence.

bjtitus• 5 years ago

TLDR: There is no "popular crusade" telling people to end all meat consumption which will somehow leave you nutritionally deficient. Hundreds of millions of people eat vegetarian diets around the world and numerous studies show the benefits of reducing red + processed meat consumption. Replacing fast food burgers with plant based alternatives could be a good option for people with decreased availability of plant based alternatives to meat.

The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided.

The only "popular crusade" is the universal dietary guidance against the excessively high consumption of red meat in the western diet. There are mountains of evidence showing links between higher red meat consumption and increased risk of the top killers in many western societies (heart disease, colon cancer, etc.). [1] [2] [3]

There's a quick summary from the Harvard School of Public Health for those who don't want to pour through the published studies: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...

You cite many studies here about the environmental effects of meat production and exactly 0 citing the nutritional or health aspects of meat consumption. Meat can contain valuable nutrients but hundreds of millions eat vegetarian diets around the world and many other sources (nuts, legumes, fish, etc.) can provide these nutrients in better forms. All major health organizations recommend limiting red and processed meat consumption below what the average American diets currently consist of.

Replacing fast foods with plant based alternatives doesn't seem like a bad thing at all when you consider that meats and grains are the only things Americans are consuming over and above the dietary guidelines – at 140% of the recommendations [4]. Given that Heart Disease is the number one leading cause of death in the United States, shouldn't we be prioritizing alternatives which reduce the intake of high-glycemic carbohydrates? There have been many studies covering plant-based alternatives which back this up. [5]

[1] Battaglia Richi E, Baumer B, Conrad B, Darioli R, Schmid A, Keller U. Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies. Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 2015;85(1-2):70-8. doi: 10.1024/0300-9831/a000224. PMID: 26780279.

[2] Salter AM. The effects of meat consumption on global health. Rev Sci Tech. 2018 Apr;37(1):47-55. doi: 10.20506/rst.37.1.2739. PMID: 30209430.

[3] Abete I, Romaguera D, Vieira AR, Lopez de Munain A, Norat T. Association between total, processed, red and white meat consumption and all-cause, CVD and IHD mortality: a meta-analysis of cohort studies. Br J Nutr. 2014 Sep 14;112(5):762-75. doi: 10.1017/S000711451400124X. Epub 2014 Jun 16. PMID: 24932617.

[4] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...

[5] Vatanparast H, Islam N, Shafiee M, Ramdath DD. Increasing Plant-Based Meat Alternatives and Decreasing Red and Processed Meat in the Diet Differentially Affect the Diet Quality and Nutrient Intakes of Canadians. Nutrients. 2020 Jul 9;12(7):2034. doi: 10.3390/nu12072034. PMID: 32659917; PMCID: PMC7400918.

tomstoms2• 5 years ago

Sorry stopped reading at “ Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant”

Edit: Vote it down all you want. The statement isn’t getting any less idiotic

windexh8er3• 5 years ago

Aside from the questionable source laid out here, the statement that:

Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant...

...is pure nonsense. Vitamins, minerals, fiber. Considering you can't get any fiber from meat is just the start of how biased some have been influenced by misinformation.

luc_• 5 years ago

You should flip through some pages of "How Not To Die" by Michael Greger some time...

rsj_hn7• 5 years ago

This isn't a crusade against meat, it's a crusade between Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods as to who will capture the (niche) alt-beef market.

McDonald's signed an agreement making BM their preferred supplier of fake beef, so Impossible is put at a disadvantage. Absolutely none of this replaces any real beef with fake beef, or even results in less real beef eaten or sold.

yboris• 5 years ago

As I understand, there are places where you can just put cows and they feed themselves off the land. But there is also a tremendous amount of deforestation happening because those lands are then used to grow food for cows that are in other locations.

I find it amazing how well avoiding eating meat aligns good things:

- less animal suffering

- less pollution of air, water, and land

- less waste (inefficient way to get calories)

- better health (assuming you substitute meat with vegetables and not highly-processed food)

sjg007• 5 years ago

I know it’s McDonald’s but if this is a healthier option cholesterol wise that’d be good.. I mean maybe that’s impossible at McDonald’s but -shrug-

dkdk8283• 5 years ago

Real climate change can only happen with the cooperation of the worlds biggest polluters: China and India.

einpoklum• 5 years ago

I'm no biologist, but even assuming all of that blog post's sources are reliable - it is still cherry-picking findings:

* Not counting livestock contribution to GHG, but rather an estimate of how much removing it would reduce GHG (which is room for a lot of speculation that is very hard to support).

* Preferring a figure taken from a single paper by two individual researchers over the United Nations' official FAO statistic, which is 14.5% of emissions due to livestock lifecycle.

* Focusing on how forestation is challenging, while the source acknowledge that the de-forestation is very damaging.

* Ignoring the huge amounts of land necessary for growing livestock (Example: ~55 times the area for peas for same amount of protein [1])

* Ignoring the question of the distribution of meat consumption among people in the world today, and the feasibility of a meat-rich diet for everyone.

I'm sure there's more, but this is enough not to be very receptive to the claim of misguidedness.

PS - Due disclosure: I eat poultry and occasionally other meat. But I am still worried about the environmental impact of its production, with the foremost aspect being de-forestation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=15588468

kleton2• 5 years ago

It only takes a little bit of bromoform to poison methanogenesis in rumen. It would actually improve feed conversion as well.

rtrdea• 5 years ago

HahahahahhHa

audunw• 5 years ago

Regarding carbon: "removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions. Similarly, removing all dairy would lead to a reduction of just 0.7%.

ONLY? That's a pretty damn big percentage for such a small piece of the economy.

It feels a bit like saying "removal of Ford vehicles from the road would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6%" .. or whatever it'd be. Of course you can make it sound small if you compere a portion (livestock) of a portion (farming) of the national economy, to all emissions from the entire nation.

Plant alternatives would have their own emissions of course, but I think there's a more realistic path to zero emissions. There's some interesting work on reducing methane emissions from livestock themselves (additives to the feed and such), but the path is more challenging.

andbberger• 5 years ago

I'll leave to the other comments to combat the factual inaccuracies here but - there is an inherent and substantial efficiency loss in consuming secondary consumers.

There's no getting around that.

jVinc• 5 years ago

Offering alternatives to people who prefer to eat plant based meals rather than meat based ones is hardly a "crusade against meat". I understand you would feel attacked if these corporations were going out and saying "no more meat" in reality, they are just putting 1 or 2 options on the menu which allows people who don't want to eat meat to still eat unhealthy takeaway. No one is trying to force you to not eat meat. But the status Que you are trying to desperately defend has people choosing a vegans or vegetarian diet completely unwelcome at mainstream fastfood restaurants because there is nothing for them on the menu, not even the french fries are vegetarian. And for what purpose? KFC and McDonald is just as happy taking your money and slinging over a burger without a patty as one with one. So why shouldn't they offer plant based alternatives?

adrianN• 5 years ago

A bit of meat is probably a valuable part of a balanced diet. But the average American eats nearly 100kg per year. That's a lot. You don't need to become a Vegan to cut that in half. You can eat a quarter pounder with cheese every day and still only consume 40kg of meat per year.

fortran77• 5 years ago

Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment,

And reducing the amount of food we eat in general! If the 66% of the U.S. population who are obese or overweight just started eating no more food than they needed, we'd go a long way to reducing greenhouse emissions.

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oby.22657

kleton2• 5 years ago

If you fly over the country, you will see a bunch of green circles from center pivot irrigation systems mining "fossil" groundwater. All the brown spots outside of those circles are vegetated, but the only way to get human food out of them is grazing. By necessity there will always be a large amount of cattle grazing area. Feedlots should be ended as a practice- wasteful of feedstock and poor quality and nutrition of the output.

swiley• 5 years ago

Maybe. As someone who isn't a fan of the meat production process and accidentally bought some vegan "meat" due to Amazon pushing it on everyone it's not the same. I threw it out because I couldn't eat it.

bluntfang• 5 years ago

My toddler did the same thing! Just threw it off their high chair trey!

lostgame• 5 years ago

Similar! I can immediately and clearly tell the difference, like water and vodka!

A similar texture, colour and presentation does not the same thing make.

It may have been due to the spelling, but I found it utterly fascinating that a dead comment below stated even their toddler was able to differentiate!

I didn’t throw it out. I donated it to a friend. I have a basically never throw food out policy.

therealmarv5• 5 years ago

You should research on German Ökotest and beyond meat test. I don't get why things like beyond meat is not more tested. Why is mineral oil in their patties ???

savrajsingh• 5 years ago

there is no mineral oil in beyond meat: https://www.beyondmeat.com/products/beyond-beef/ click 'ingredients'

frankfrankfrank• 5 years ago

That methane emission meme is not accurate, as simple logic reveals. The methane produced by cows is not going to be significantly more than the equivalent produced by the same amount of plant material left to rot/decompose. One would even have to reasonably theorize and possibly could even conclude that the energy the cow takes out of the plant material to produce milk and meat and heat, actually captures energy that rotting plant material would have converted into methane.

An interesting side story about this issue is that it has been shown a long time ago that ruminants actually enrich the environment (assuming non-industrial practices) through both processing the plant material and both converting it into compost and also seeding it with bacteria, while also trampling the plant material into the ground and thereby facilitating the breakdown. That lesson came out of the discovery of Allan Savory a Rhodesian/Zimbabwean ecologist that desertification only accelerated once huge herds were culled in an assumption that the grazing was causing the desertification, rather than that they were part of the system.

I encourage you to reassess what you surely are convinced about.

ornornor• 5 years ago

ruminants actually enrich the environment (assuming non-industrial practices)

Wink wink. What’s the ratio of non industrially farmed beef vs industrially farmed beef anecdotes non withstanding?

mikepurvis2• 5 years ago

Follow the foodchain, though— the "plant material" that industrially farmed cows are eating is almost entirely grown-for-purpose corn for which there are substantial inputs in terms of petroleum-based fertilizers. And even if there weren't, those same fields left fallow would be capturing the same atmospheric carbon for plant/tree growth and holding it for much longer than a crop which is being harvested every season.

It's not like the cows are eating exclusively grass clippings which were just going to be left to rot otherwise.

ceph_• 5 years ago

This post is disingenuous at best. Want to cite some credible sources that back it up?

Methane is produced by decomposition in oxygen deprived anerobic environments. Like a cows gut or a tidal bog. Grass rotting in a field will not produce the same levels of methane as grass digested by cows.

And that's not even touching on the rate at which it's released. Are you going to say burning the field is just as bad as letting it decompose because they both release CO2?

danShumway2• 5 years ago

I've commented to the same effect in the past[0], but we grow food for animals. It's not like we have a giant pile of rotting soy/corn, so we might as well have some cattle eat it. We grow a lot more soy/corn than would otherwise be necessary, so that we can grow more cows.

The methane produced by cows is not going to be significantly more than the equivalent produced by the same amount of plant material left to rot/decompose.

This is also not true, but even in a world where cows don't produce more methane, it's just inaccurate for people to look at the current feed production in America and to say that we'd be producing that much food if we weren't raising an outsized amount of cattle.

Sure, cattle can be raised on otherwise unusable land. But that is just not the direction that factory farming in the US is going.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26056871

sammalloy• 5 years ago

That lesson came out of the discovery of Allan Savory a Rhodesian/Zimbabwean ecologist that desertification only accelerated once huge herds were culled in an assumption that the grazing was causing the desertification, rather than that they were part of the system.

The only reason I came to this thread was to see if someone would pull the Allan Savory card, and here it is.

There is no reputable, working scientist in the relevant field who cites Savory as a reliable source.

According to a 2016 study published by the University of Uppsala, the actual rate at which improved grazing management could contribute to carbon sequestration is seven times lower than the claims made by Savory. The study concludes that Holistic Management cannot reverse climate change. A study by the Food and Climate Research Network in 2017 has concluded that Savory's claims about carbon sequestration are "unrealistic" and very different from those issued by peer-reviewed studies.

rsj_hn7• 5 years ago

The agreement isn't to make vegan meat more available, but to make Beyond Meat the "preferred supplier" of vegan meat when they do sell it (so that they don't choose an alternate vegan beef supplier for their patties but buy all their alt-beef from BM).

E.g. this is an industry press release akin to saying "We were chosen to supply the rubber for the new Toyota Tacoma". People reading this as McDonald's promising to stop using beef or replacing beef with the fake beef or even putting the alt-beef into new dishes are misinterpreting this press release.

bendubuisson• 5 years ago

I'm a vegetarian, but Cowspiracy is not something I would use in an argument, the thing is full of shortcuts and misleading facts...

_cloudkate• 5 years ago

I share the same take with you! Reading some of the discussions going on in the comments, I'm surprised anyone thinks this is anything but good news. Like you said, it means:

1. non-vegetarians & non-vegans have more options. This is great for so many reasons! 2. Demand for beef will go down, which has a positive effect on the environment.

Chris20482• 5 years ago

I eat less meat because I think quality has declined; as meat is seen as the default-superior option, quality is less scrutinised, and has thus lowered.

As such, either I buy expensive, from a trusted location, I I stick to something else; Vegan options has been good quality so far, not that I don't expect this to change in the future.

Right now highly processed & shaped pink slime (with added salt + sugar) is sold at unreasonable prices, partly because people don't know what they are eating (or what it's really worth, often masquerading at other things), and partly because the main factor in consumer choice is PR budget - the low cost cheap meat therefore gets the higher marketing budget.

My one hope in this space is grocery delivery services becoming the norm will make it easier for people to scrutinise products from the comfort of home, with the convenience of a search engine.

ricardobayes5• 5 years ago

Don't think it's just marketing though. People always reject change at first - and they are right to do so. This reaction is coded in us. I just hope vegan food items will not go the path of electric vehicles where they are forced on us without choice. (Saying this as a plant-based eater).

chovybizzass2• 5 years ago

i don't believe cow farts are a bigger problem than cars.

YeGoblynQueenne21• 5 years ago

> This is the best news I've heard all week.

Not meaning to snark, but I don't see the good news. A manufacturer of mass-produced, low-quality, highly procesed food has struck a deal with large companies that specialise in selling exactly that kind of food. That the food in question is plant-based makes no difference at all. Companies like McDonalds, KFC and PizzaHut are responsible for the normalisation of industrial food production that is causing widespread environmental destruction and they have no incentive to solve the problems it creates. Switching to plant-based alternatives will simply change where the damage is done. This is just typical greenwash.

As a for instance of how companies like McDonalds encourage industrial farming and agriculuture tactics that are detrimental to the environment:

A Mongabay investigation, prompted by a report done earlier this year by the NGO Mighty Earth, suggests that customers buying chicken from some of Britain’s largest supermarkets and fast food chains may unwittingly be fuelling rampant deforestation in the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian savanna.

Tesco, Morrisons and McDonald’s buy their chicken from Cargill, the biggest private company in the world, which feeds its poultry with imported soy. The U.S. food distributor purchases its soy from large-scale agribusiness operations that often burn and clear large swathes of native forest to make way for their plantations.

https://www.mightyearth.org/ukmeatinvestigation/

ip262• 5 years ago

But that's exactly the point. People eat 5 million head of cattle at McDonalds annually. Beyond Meat will hopefully need a lot less soy feedstock than cattle ranching for the same burger, so it should be a strong improvement.

theptip• 5 years ago

Companies like McDonalds, KFC and PizzaHut are responsible for the normalisation of industrial food production that is causing widespread environmental destruction and they have no incentive to solve the problems it creates. Switching to plant-based alternatives will simply change where the damage is done.

This seems like a reasonable prior, if you had no evidence about the specific harms of meat production vs. Beyond Meat. But given the widely documented harms of beef production (devastation of the Amazon for soy feedstock/grazing, GHG emissions, water usage, etc) and the lack of evidence of similar levels of harm from potential replacements like Beyond, I'm curious as to why you're indifferent to potential improvements in the worst parts of the food supply chain.

It seems like a non-sequitur; "McDonalds' current practices do harm, McDonalds is considering a new product, therefore new product must do equal harm."

It sounds like you do care about the harms; do you have specific evidence/comparisons that indicate Beyond actually is as bad as beef for the environment?

My model here is that companies like McDonalds are completely indifferent to the negative externalities they impose on the environment, except inasmuch as they become financial/reputational liabilities. I see no reason to assume that a plant-based alternative must, a priori, be bad, just because McDonalds are rolling them out.

As a thought experiment, consider if they had vat-grown beef, produced in each store. This might have the side-effect of halting environmental devastation and reducing CO2 emissions from transportation. Would McDonalds pay extra for this? Probably not. But if it's significantly cheaper than farmed beef, then I think obviously yes, they would use it. I don't think you could make the generic statement "switching to vat-grown alternatives will simply change where the damage is done" without providing a more rigorous analysis of the specific processes involved.

yrgulation• 5 years ago

As a beef “fan” i was amazed by the taste of beyond meat. I am trying to reduce meat (due to practical moral considerations) so dont be harsh. Happy to try such alternatives.

rendered_fat• 5 years ago

Is it healthy?

war1025• 5 years ago

The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people

This argument always reminds me of Margarine, which was promoted for years as having great health benefits, and then we later find out that it is loaded with trans fats and actually terrible for you.

adtac4• 5 years ago

That argument makes no sense. If I said that the more unleaded petrol is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people, would it remind you of margarine too? Should we go back to leaded petrol? Or coca-cola with cocaine in it?

megablast2• 5 years ago

The real game changer will be when they price it cheaper than meat.

adtac4• 5 years ago

That will require government subsidisation, just like how meat and dairy is subsidised.

actuator• 5 years ago

and not just dedicated vegans.

Are vegans actually adopting these? I would have assumed non vegetarians eating fake meat more. A significant part of the world is vegetarian/vegan, so we don't have dearth of just plant based food preparations from there. Isn't it easier to adopt those things for dedicated vegans?

TheRealSteel• 5 years ago

I've spent the last year vegan (only eating meat again this week because I'm in quarantine and can't get vegan food) and I:

- Firmly believe that lab grown and plant-based imitation meats will be the thing that makes the world vegan, not somehow convincing everybody to stop eating meat and dairy

- Would invest in lab-grown meat for profit if I had money to invest - it just makes sense to me that it will eventually become cheaper to manufacture than traditional meat for obvious reasons, and when it does, the McDonald's marketing machine will be out in full force to convince everyone that lab-grown meat is the manly masculine option (completely different to being one of those 'pussy vegans', right!?) and will succeed massively

Beyond is a plant-based imitation meat, not a lab grown meat (which I think will make more of a splash due to their variety and authenticity), but I still think it has its place and wish them success.

Even if you don't are about the animal cruelty, animal agriculture is a huge contributor to climate change - far bigger than international flights - and not eating meat is usually the best thing an individual can do to lower their contribution.

belorn2• 5 years ago

When it comes to the climate I have two primary problems:

1: We use fossil fuels (natural gas) to create artificial fertilizers. We use manure from cattle to create organic fertilizers. The production of artificial fertilizers is seen as positive for the environment while the production of organic fertilizers is seen as an negative.

2: When we use artificial fertilizers to grow crops which get used to produce bio fuel we call it carbon neutral. Cattle eating grass is in contrast seen as a major if the largest contributor to climate change.

notnestle• 5 years ago

Don’t be fooled, not all plant based foods are good for the planet. Nestle makes them in Israel & sends them with refrigerated air freight around the world. That’s more harmful than a cow...

waheoo• 5 years ago

I don't think you can call it vegan.

Millenia of meat eating went into the making of this "meat".

spicyramen• 5 years ago

That doesn't taste as good as meat.

jb_gericke2• 5 years ago

Agriculture accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, of which livestock is only a portion (soil and crops are lumped in with agriculture). Focussing on the smallest denominator in reducing emissions is nonsensical (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...).

I understand there is a morality aspect at play but it's frustrating hearing the vegan vitriol dolled out without thought for consequence. Meat is by far the most nutrient dense food available to humans. The vegan diet (as in strict vegan, not vegetarian) is incredibly unhealthy. Have you considered the land use required to grow the crops necessary to deliver the same amount of nutrients to a global populace?

There's a burgeoning industry growing which conflates health and veganism and snidely appeals to the morality aspect of the vegan diet while dangerously touting non-existent health benefits. The list of ingredients ina a beyond burger is longer than my arm.

My advice? Stay away from fast food (vegan or otherwise), eat whole, unprocessed foods much as possible, eat 'mindfully', make your own decisions regarding your health and diet and don't buy into anyone's snake oil/capitalistic agenda.

kmonsen2• 5 years ago

I'm not vegan, but I always pick the Beyond/impossible options when they are available. I hardly taste the difference and one less cow had to die for me having a tasty meal. And greenhouse gasses I guess, but for me animal cruelty is the most important.

ricardobayes5• 5 years ago

You are one cool person

seanmcdirmid2• 5 years ago

Unless there is a health benefit, why would normal people adopt vegan meat? Impossible meat has just as much fat and other bad things compared to real meat, I’m not sure why would be interested in it.

If we replace cattle grazing by more plant growing, what are we going to do with the marginal land that is arable enough for grazing but not for growing things? It’s not like neveda is going to be able to switch from cattle to soy.

wortelefant• 5 years ago

Which ingredients are you referring to exactly - the lack of antibiotics normally used when raising cattle? Plant-based meat has much less cholesterol, but the main reason should be animal welfare. Why choose to be responsible for the death of a living being, especially if there are healthy and tasty alternative.

Unused land should not be a problem, it was not always used for grazing after all.

looperhacks• 5 years ago

People who care for animals but don't want to give up the taste of meat come to mind

acd10j• 5 years ago

After reading some of the comments, I am increasingly thinking that People who eat beef/meat regularly will still seek Original/Farm grown/actual cattle beef. And Beyond meat style beef will be used for turning vegetarian people to get taste of beef, so that they can graduate to real beef later. Non Vegetarian people will never accept climate impact their eating habits have on environment.

dsomers• 5 years ago

I’m not a vegetarian, but I eat a lot less meat now than two years ago primarily because of climate change, but also because it now feels easy because I’ve found meat alternatives like this that I enjoy the taste of.

moltar• 5 years ago

The myth about beef and methane has been debunked many times. If you want a detailed accord please read the Sacred Cow or watch the doc.

otabdeveloper43• 5 years ago

Beef is a net positive for the environment while "vegan" mass-produced cash crops are a net negative.

Beef can (and does) graze on natural pastures that would have been otherwise ruined and turned into something useless.

perfunctory2• 5 years ago

If only we ate grass fed beef exclusively. Unfortunately this is not the case.

adtac4• 5 years ago

Cash crops such as soy that are a mainstay in vegan diets? What do you think most of the cows eat before they're slaughtered for your lunch? A five year Oxford University study done on 38,700 farms showed that if everyone in the world switched to a plant based diet, we would be able to reduce agricultural land by 76% [1].

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29853680/

kvgr• 5 years ago

I don't understand this vegan processed food propaganda to push people not eat meat. What would be much more efficient is making laws for more quality meat. US is very weirdly regulated(drugs, healthcare, doctors compared to food quality) Reduce the steroid meat. The prices would go up, the consumption down. If you want to eat meat, you would pay more. I would. I love meat, all types. You don't also have to eat beef every day. Chicken, pork and other types of meat are pretty much equal in quality if you avoid fat cuts for example of pork. I also love bread and vegetables. And I also think it is much better to eat fresh meat and fresh vegetables then heavily processed vegetables, grains and industrially processed oils. There are much more efficient ways to curb down emissions than fighting holy war against meat(coal anyone? trans oceanic shipping).

TeMPOraL• 5 years ago

I don't understand this vegan processed food propaganda to push people not eat meat.

What's the propaganda angle?

This is working the problem from a different end. Yes, we need to increase quality and reduce the amount of steroids/antibiotics used in meat production. Yes, we should stop subsidizing it and let the prices go up. But at the same time, lots of people love meat, so providing a similarly tasting alternative will reduce the demand for meat without forcing people to alter their tastes too much.

Mid-term, it helps mitigate a climate problem. Meat production is very energy-inefficient and emission-intensive to such a large degree, that it is a good problem to attack early.

Long-term, it also solves an ethical problem. Ever since homo sapiens started to settle down and domesticate animals, we've been very cruel to farm animals[0]. I don't want to push any moralizing propaganda here - it's a touchy topic for everyone now, as way too many groups use it as a weapon, but I think everyone knows there's something to it. It's uncomfortable to touch. But! If we can develop enough meat substitutes, we can just sidestep this problem entirely, and eventually stop farming animals[1].

There are much more efficient ways to curb down emissions than fighting holy war against meat(coal anyone? trans oceanic shipping).

I think a better way than fighting a holy war is to make options available. Which is what Beyond Meat is doing. They're not telling you, "stop eating meat!" - they're saying, "if you'd like to stop eating meat but can't because it's so tasty, try our alternative, maybe you'll like it enough".

[0] - Factory farming is just extreme end of it, but even the old-school small farms are just animal abuse and torture.

[1] - At least for meat. I'm not sure what the story for milk and eggs are, both of which are crucial ingredient to a wide range of foods and chemistry.

string2• 5 years ago

Right, and until they solve all those problems and implement these efficiencies, a very easy way to make an impact on an individual level right now, is to not eat meat. But I understand it's easier still to just propose solutions that offset the responsibility.

The EU are actively trying to make it more difficult for consumers to identify vegan alternatives (amendment 171). Governments are not going to make laws that significantly increase meat prices, we are nowhere near that kind of policymaking.

HenryBemis2• 5 years ago

Marketing-wise, I remember reading about the Oil industry heavily advertising on the benefits of plastic RECYCLING, which helped remove the guilt on oil extraction and plastic production, thus helping the large growth in the business[0]. (APOLOGIES for the below sporadic CAPS - I really have to learn how to write bold/italics in HN)

I see the ethical and environmental benefits of eating meat without killing an animal. This makes me wonder the following:

-is this to ensure meat-eaters continue to eat meat (for their benefit) without the suffering of animals?

-is this to ensure that we eat cleaner/healthier/disease-free meat? [1]

-is this to industrialise meat production further with a smaller harmful footprint?

-is this to SELL TO VEGANS? (expand the customer base?). If I can break down the vegetarians/vegans into two categories: a) Those who don't want to eat meat because they prefer a plant-based diet (by choice, medical reasons, etc.) and b) Those who do it for ethical reasons - 'meat is murder'.

-is this to SELL TO various RELIGIONS FOLLOWERS? I am thinking that around 2-3-4bn people do NOT eat a certain type of meat (or another)(pork, beef) for religious reasons. Imagine selling 'non-beef beef burgers' to 1.5bn people in India, 'non-pork bacon' to 2-3bn Muslims, etc.

-how will 'permissible' (halal) meat consumers be affected by this? The 'halal' process defines a ritual that is not possile. Will religion follow/adapt?

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-... [1]: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2015/08/poop-ground-beef-su... (I was trying to remember the movie.. but I couldn't..)

shafyy3• 5 years ago

Pardon me for hijacking the top comment, but I see so much wrong information here that I want to address:

1) Direct emissions from livestock

Yes, direct emissions from livestock are around 15% of all GHG emissions globally, and less than that in the US or most developed countries. That's because a lot of developed countries "import" emissions by buying cheap meat from livestock agriculture intensive coutries

2) Direct emissions are just the tip of the iceberg, though

The bigger threats from livestock agriculture are land use and loss of biodiversity.

Today, around 45% of usable land is used for or by livestock [1]. That's nuts. That land has something called the "opportunity cost of carbon" - meaning how much carbon could be sequestrated there by natural vegetation if it wasn't used for livestock. And that's a lot. One study that was published in Nature estimated that: "[...] finding that shifts in global food production to plant-based diets by 2050 could lead to sequestration of 332–547 GtCO2, equivalent to 99–163% of the CO2 emissions budget consistent with a 66% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 °C [2]

Biodiversity is a separate issue than climate change (mostly), but if we start fucking it up more its consequences will be more dire, and it's not on the public's mind currently. Today, 60% of all mammals are cows. Only 4% of all mammals are wild life [3]. Let that sink in. Disturbing habitats of species, planting monocultures and changing the balance of biodiversity leads to the extinction of a lot of species. Humans are at the top of the food chain, and starting to erase species further downstream will lead to non-linear events that will endanger us. And don't get me started about zoonotic diseases.

3) Holistic grazing

One comment mentioned that it's better to have cattle on land that's considered "marginal" than not having cattle, arguing that having cattle actually sequestrates more carbon than it emits. Of course, this is total bullshit or we would have some sort of cow pertuum mobile. This sort of livestock agriculture is often referred to "holistic grazing" and is more a cult movement than something rooted in science. Their "research" is often debunked by scientific studies [4].

It's always better to eat plants directly than to process it through a cow or chicken or goat. That's just basics physics.

Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4.epdf?shar...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/163431/

Solstinox• 5 years ago

When you see this as the top comment on HN, you realize how good of a job Big Oil has done deflecting their sins onto animal husbandry.

marrone12• 5 years ago

I prefer the taste of impossible but this is great news for the category.

tommoor2• 5 years ago

Agreed, impossible is far superior. Impossible is only $5.99 for 12oz in Trader Joes at the moment

ArchOversight• 5 years ago

It's also for sale at Costco: $16 for 2 lbs which matches the pricing of the Trader Joes.

chasd003• 5 years ago

i can get a pound of organic, free range, rocked to sleep every night by the rancher, ground beef for about that. i thought Impossible/Beyond was suppose to be significantly cheaper than beef? I've had it but my wife brought it home one night so didn't see the price.

tootie• 5 years ago

I think either beats any frozen beef that gets served at a cheap fast-food joints while neither comes close to beating fresh, high-quality beef. They can take over the entire bottom of the market which is probably the most unwholesome for the environment.

Spivak4• 5 years ago

Eh, the bottom of the market is made from the "bad" cuts of meat. As long someone wants the good cuts there's no reason to waste the rest. Nobody's making hamburger out of cuts of meat that could have been sold as a steak.

spacejam882• 5 years ago

Speak for yourself. Nothing can beat an oily, greasy In N Out beef burger with processed American "Cheese" on top of something that barely resembles beef, but you can't say it isn't the best thing you've ever tasted!

jandrese2• 5 years ago

I agree, Beyond overdoes the fake smoke flavor. But they seem to be better equipped to scale up than Impossible, they've beaten them to mass market in almost every location I've seen.

olyjohn• 5 years ago

I bought a package of Beyond Meat. It was right next to the ground beef, and looked like ground beef. I assumed I could substitute it for ground beef in my spaghetti. Big fat nope! I opened the package, and it smelled exactly like dog food. The smell when cooking it was horrible. It completely ruined my batch of spaghetti. I don't know how people are cooking this stuff and enjoying it. Maybe there's some other way to cook it or season it? As someone who isn't much of a chef, I don't know what to do with it. Go to your favorite search engine, search for "Beyond Meat Smells..." and check out the autofill. I know I'm not the only one.

gnicholas• 5 years ago

I imagine that they'll tweak the flavoring for customers like Taco Bell, who wouldn't want the over-the-top smoke flavor. Like others here, I have tried Beyond as a ground beef substitute (in chili) and found it to be way too smokey.

On the other hand, Impossible + ground turkey makes a great chili.

maximente2• 5 years ago

impossible is focusing on restaurants more than mass market. observe eg partnerships with chefs/restaurants. a fairly large amount of beef in the US is consumed in restaurants/made to order type stuff; that's what they're attacking

JoshTriplett3• 5 years ago

I prefer Impossible Burger as a substitute for grounds, but Beyond Meat also makes things like hot dogs and breakfast sausage, which Impossible doesn't.

mjamesaustin• 5 years ago

YES, Beyond has some incredible sausage products! I go with them for sausage and Impossible for burgers.

RandallBrown3• 5 years ago

Impossible makes breakfast sausage. Starbucks has an Impossible breakfast sandwich.

rsj_hn7• 5 years ago

If you prefer the taste of Impossible, wouldn't you prefer that Yum brands select them as their fake beef provider? Why is this good news for the category?

leereeves• 5 years ago

On a somewhat related topic, has anyone seen any information about how well the Impossible Whopper is selling?

TaylorAlexander• 5 years ago

I don't have that data, but I have an anecdote.

I buy them about 4 times a week on my way to work (its a really convenient stop and I don't get fries, cheese, or mayo with it).

When they were new, they would sometimes be out of stock. But I haven't encountered that in probably six month or more. They really seem to be fully supporting the product. So hopefully that means they're selling pretty well!

judge2020• 5 years ago

Jan 2020: https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/burger-king-franchisees-...

fl0wenol• 5 years ago

So that's why they added it to the 2 for $6 menu. I got them all the time when it was on there.

Anecdata, but ... It's basically the only thing I get from Burger King anymore. And I'm not vegetarian or anything, I just had consistent (not the best, but serviceable and consistent) texture and flavor so I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything.

But I wouldn't be down to paying a big premium for them... that 2 for 6 putting it on the same level as the normal Whopper made the case.

silicon24012• 5 years ago

In hopes of boosting the Impossible Whopper, it's the first thing I've eaten from BK that I've enjoyed in over a decade. No hyperbole, it just tastes good whereas to my taste, the rest of BK food tastes pretty dismal.

grecy• 5 years ago

and yet their stock price is down..... this market is hard to read!

headmelted• 5 years ago

I would think this was less correlated as it’s only a contract for supply.

In any case McDonalds isn’t selling a co-branded Beyond Meat product, they’re selling the McPlant. Beyond Meat’s moat looks very shaky here.

It seems likely that Beyond Meat is only getting these contracts as it’s a relatively cheap way for McDonalds to test the substitute market before producing their own alternatives. It makes no business sense for them to hand over the core of their product to BM when it’s likely they can create something similar in-house.

axlee• 5 years ago

Agreed. The only food items that McDs have not vertically integrated are sodas, everything else is bound to end up part of their supply chain.

dataflow• 5 years ago

Okay but Pizza Hut literally brands it as Beyond: https://www.pizzahut.com/c/content/beyond-meat-pizzas/index....

and so does KFC? https://global.kfc.com/press-releases/kfc-beyond-fried-chick...

so I think this doesn't fully explain it?

LegitShady4• 5 years ago

Beyond Meat’s moat looks very shaky here.

Beyond doesn't have a moat. They make veggie burgers.

They became super popular when impossible burger started making the rounds on the news and rode the wave of interest impossible burger created.

Impossible burger has a moat - they have yeast produced heme and I assume some patents on it.

Beyond meat makes veggie burgers. They have no moat.

OldHand2018• 5 years ago

Exactly, and Beyond Meat is only the "preferred supplier". BM probably has to meet quantity and price targets or they are done. Good luck building up big profit margins.

arebop• 5 years ago

Can they create something similar in-house? Beyond and particularly Impossible appear to be far ahead of the competition in meat substitutes, and presumably they each have close to 20yr left on their patents. It doesn't look so easy to rival the leaders in this space.

aphextron• 5 years ago

and yet their stock price is down..... this market is hard to read!

Stocks don't just magically go up forever on good news. They've run a loss for the last 4 years in a row, and they've missed their last two earnings by more than half. They're already massively overvalued as it is.

giarc• 5 years ago

But those factors would have been priced in prior to this announcement.

xnx2• 5 years ago

I believe this good-news press release was timed to counter the narrative around their unfavorable earnings report.

ksec2• 5 years ago

market is hard to read!

The stock market guidelines has been the same for a very, very long time.

Shares collapse on bad news, fall on good news, and rise on no news.

submeta• 5 years ago

Just when you think there is no hope for this planet and for humanity something slowly emerges seemingly out of nowhere.

Fridays for future was one of those developments that caught me by surprise. Young people fighting for our planet while „angry white men“ claiming there ain’t no climate change.

Or take the sudden surge of interest in everything veggy / vegan. In Germany there is a growing demand for vegan products, and this demand seems to be very strong, because every grocery store has a growing number of vegan products lately.

I turned vegetarian last year not because I hate the taste of meat but because there are a dozen reasons we should not be eating meat. Environmental reasons, but also the pain we are causing these animals, every single day.

mutatio• 5 years ago

Interesting, are there studies in climate change denial demographics?

marknutter3• 5 years ago

What's with the casual racism in your post?

txsoftwaredev3• 5 years ago

You can't be racist towards white people. It would only be racist if the said angry black men.

scottLobster2• 5 years ago

You can buy ethically sourced/farmed meat (albeit at a premium), and farmed fish in particular is quite sustainable.

I would dispute that there are "a dozen" reasons we should not be eating meat. There are perhaps a few practical reasons we should not be eating low-quality mass-market meat (health, environment, animal cruelty), and a few moral reasons we should not eat unethically raised meat. And even those reasons are debatable (what if someone in a 3rd world country can only afford unethically raised meat? etc)

soyftware3• 5 years ago

Any source of meat is not ethical to the animals.

Affordability almost doesn't matter. Staple foods like rice, grains, and beans are staple foods for a reason.

sparkling• 5 years ago

In Germany there is a growing demand for vegan products, and this demand seems to be very strong, because every grocery store has a growing number of vegan products lately.

Greenwashing PR

Talk to any supermarket manager and they will tell you that the vegan specialty section is a net loss. HQ tells them do keep it, so they keep it.

mleonhard3• 5 years ago

Are you claiming that all grocery stores sell vegan products as loss-leaders? Can you please share a link to some data on it?

dj_mc_merlin• 5 years ago

In Germany there is a growing demand for vegan products, and this demand seems to be very strong, because every grocery store has a growing number of vegan products lately.

As somebody who used to live there, I think this has more to do with the Zeitgeist. Most Germans feel nowadays that one should cause no harm, no offensiveness, and be completely environmentally & socially sound. Which sounds great on paper, but I've found it a recipe for a soul-draining society of "holier-than-thou" people. I do not mean this in the mean sense towards you, but it is one of the reasons I moved from there.

Method-X• 5 years ago

To be fair, it’s like that everywhere now.

at_• 5 years ago

Their stuff is good. Here in the UK every supermarket chain now has their own vegan ranges putting out stuff almost (admittedly not quite) as good, priced very competitively. Even a couple of years ago that simply wasn't case.

Random stray thought I had earlier is how interesting things are going to be when we move further away from emulating existing meat products, and become more comfortable eating plant-based stuff that doesn't necessarily resemble (or have names that are a play on) anything else in nature, in the same way Pepsi is just Pepsi. I'd love to take a peak at what menus are gonna look like in 20 years, assuming this shift is the real deal. Are we gonna have to memorise a slapstick sounding list of dozens of engineered protein sources to get by? (Oomph, tofurky, shroomdog... and of course, quorn! etc)

theNJR4• 5 years ago

The analogy of less water and more Pepsi is terrifying and potentially accurate.

hedora6• 5 years ago

Plants love electrolytes!

hans-moleman• 5 years ago

BBQ Pepsi Burgers.

The future is beautiful.

hedora6• 5 years ago

Oh god. I’ve seen the future.

That reminds me of a certain college campus food service that signed an exclusive contract with Coke.

Coke brand milk.

Coke brand grade D but edible meat (we found the box in the dumpster).

Hell, they even f———ed up the soft drinks because they had hyper-optimized machines that mixed corn syrup, citric acid, flavor, co2 and water on site. The mix, and therefore PH, was frequently so far off that students would fall ill for 4-8 hours with convulsive stomach cramps and miss class about once a week. In fairness, it was still better than the milk.

So. Much. Food. Poisoning.

Decades later, I’m still boycotting those ^{+$&@! $@&&}^+# &@$@&s!

ukyrgf• 5 years ago

Impossible is definitely better tasting, but I'm happy to see Taco Bell is included in this deal (though not in the headline here on HN). I haven't been there since they got rid of potatoes, so having a vegan option would make my taco consumption during lunch break skyrocket.

jfengel• 5 years ago

Taco meat [EDIT: in Taco Bell's usage] is a perfect application, since its texture is already squishy and the flavor is dominated by spice. Plus, it's wrapped in a shell and mixed with lettuce and other things. Even a mediocre fake meat is enough to pass. Beyond Meat should have no trouble producing a virtually-indistinguishable taco meat.

whalesalad3• 5 years ago

Del Taco already has a Beyond Meat taco and it tastes like shit.

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

Taco meat is a perfect application, since its texture is already squishy and the flavor is dominated by spice.

“Taco Bell ground beef” rather than “taco meat”; this is very much not true of taco meat generally, including the non-ground-beef options at Taco Bell or other similar fast-food taco restaurants.

dec0dedab0de4• 5 years ago

Taco meat is a perfect application, since its texture is already squishy and the flavor is dominated by spice

Cheap fast food is a perfect application, There are plenty of higher quality tacos in the world.

RandallBrown3• 5 years ago

Jack In The Box has been using textured vegetable protein instead of meat forever. Most people don't even realize it's not meat.

mrbuttons454• 5 years ago

They are bringing the potatoes back.

dleslie2• 5 years ago

Sadly, Impossible is basically unavailable where I live; but Beyond is.

corban1• 5 years ago

Thanks vegan meat, now I can enjoy my prime beef steak with less remorse. Go vegan meat!

pindab0ter• 5 years ago

Aren't Beyond and Impossible ground beef replacements, not steak and other kind of "whole meat" replacements?

somehnguy• 5 years ago

He was making a way overused and lame joke ala ‘others eating less meat means I can double my meat consumption’

spacejam882• 5 years ago

I look at this as good but cautious news. People really need to be eating more vegetables in their diet, but I just don't think we need to go to such measures simply to mimic meat, when there are so many vegetarian options already exist. Remember that there is a large population of the world that doesn't even eat meat and that Beyond Meat is not serving those people, even though they are in the "vegetarian" market.

Ensorceled• 5 years ago

Getting someone eating 4 or 5 big macs a week to switch to 4 or 5 big beyond macs, served at the takeout they've been going to for years, is much easier than getting them to switch to traditional Indian dishes made by nobody that lives within a three hour drive of them.

arduinomancer2• 5 years ago

Ehh I think it’s fair to say that encouraging people to eat more vegetables didn’t work.

dec0dedab0de4• 5 years ago

maybe if there were more salty greasy vegetable meals that were cheap and readily available.

LinuxBender• 5 years ago

Is this the same as what is described here? [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktgh51E8V1Q

m4tthumphrey2• 5 years ago

I stopped eating meat in January 2018 and I can honestly say the only thing I miss is a Big Mac! This is VERY good news for me and a long overdue!

That being said, whilst I do love a Beyond burger, here in the UK, I was surprised to hear it was Beyond that McDonalds selected for this. While in Orlando 2 years ago, I tried an Impossible burger for the first time and it was incredible. The size, texture and taste would be perfect for McDonalds (Big Mac). Still, I will be all over this once it hits UK branches!

noneeeed• 5 years ago

I keep seeing people say that Impossible tastes better, bit Beyond keeps snagging big deals like this and it makes me wonder if they have either a price or supply-chain advantage.

hahahahe3• 5 years ago

A key factor being BYND is a public company and they are under pressure to produce results. These are largely small experimental runs. I think the general consensus is that Impossible is the better product. And my guess is McDonald’s knows this and could be trying to drive down valuation for Impossible so they can buy it. It’s currently valued around $4-5B vs $9B for BYND.

acchow• 5 years ago

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/impossible-foods-abandons-pu...

"The company said it cannot produce enough of its imitation meat to partner with the world’s No.1 fast-food chain."

redisman7• 5 years ago

I tried a Big Mac recently and it's really not that great, pretty dry. The sauce is the amazing part. I prefer getting a Impossible burger from a slightly more expensive burger place instead now. Maybe I just need to buy a gallon of that sauce and pour it on there.

m4tthumphrey2• 5 years ago

Its definitely the sauce and pickles etc, but for me the draw for McDonalds was the theatre and nostalgia from my childhood, mixed with the convenience. And of course, add in the fact that I used to have an extra hamburger and 10 McNuggets as standard made it all the more enticing!

unchocked2• 5 years ago

All of the sudden - I get it. These co's are dealing with a really shitty, commodified form of beef that they'd love to develop an alternative to. So the immediate benefit is they get to serve vegetarians, but the long term is they can transition off their price-above-all meat supply chain.

redisman7• 5 years ago

Kind of a win-win-win. Companies like it if they can just press soy or peas and fats into patties, environment likes having less bottom of the barrel meat farms, animal welfare is better at the high end farms, maybe the veg patties are a bit healthier(?).

omosubi• 5 years ago

I'm very skeptical that these patties are healthier. I'm guessing that in 5 or 10 years it'll come out that eating them regularly is terrible for your system and it'll be like the margarine/butter debate. I don't have evidence for this but I'm very curious to see

swyx• 5 years ago

what prevented you from getting it before? this seems like it was the explicit goal of the meat substitute companies for forever

unchocked2• 5 years ago

While I’ve seen that was the goal of the meat substitute co’s - I’m now seeing the fast food co’s goals aligning, which makes the plant meat business much less niche/quixotic.

sf_rob• 5 years ago

I must be vague, but my friend works at a fast food chain's corporate office and said that their strategy team was the one pushing for alternative meats for supply chain alternatives more than dietary preferences.

umvi• 5 years ago

Impossible meat with ketchup, mustard, lettuce, tomato, etc., tastes just like a beef burger to me. If impossible patties were cheaper than beef patties at the supermarket I would definitely buy them.

psychometry• 5 years ago

There's huge variance in prices where I live. Some grocery stores sell a pack of two for about $5. If you were buying sustainable beef from humanely-raised cattle you'd probably be paying that much, too.

cptskippy5• 5 years ago

Rather than trying to encourage people to substitute the ingredients in their meals, I wish we'd encourage more healthy habits and work life balance.

So many people are either pressed for time or incapable of preparing a decent meal. If they aren't ordering takeout, they're falling back on boxed or prepared options.

Simply substituting fake meat for real meat isn't improving anyone's lives.

arduinomancer2• 5 years ago

You don’t think less factory-farming is a good thing?

cptskippy5• 5 years ago

This doesn't reduce factory farming it, it just changes it.

eatwater123• 5 years ago

Improving cow's lives though :)

cptskippy5• 5 years ago

If the demand for beef plummeted over night, they wouldn't release the cows into a field to live out the remainder of their lives.

At best a drop in demand will reduce the population size of future generations of cows. It doesn't fundamentally change how they'll be raised or treated.

barbs2• 5 years ago

Can't we do both?

cptskippy5• 5 years ago

Probably not. Big business is interested in extracting the maximum amount of profit. They have no interest in doing anything that might jeopardize profits. Reducing production of subsidized crops, focusing on nutritional density and sustainable farming, and other goals only cut into profits.

We're seeing rising prices for food but the quality is in decline. Even if nutritious food was available to everyone, people are over worked, and have to little time or energy to prepare nutritious meals. They're opting for the fast/easy option every time.

notyourwork• 5 years ago

Simply substituting fake meat for real meat isn't improving anyone's lives.

Is the goal improving lives or solving a supply chain problem in a scalable fashion?

cptskippy5• 5 years ago

I believe it's being sold as the former to customers and the later to businesses.

This is just furthering our race to the bottom while we pat ourselves on the back and say we're the best.

hahahahe3• 5 years ago

I agree 100%. We need to eat more natural food. Farm our own. In that sense, I think ag tech will be a big disrupter in the next decade.

guerrilla• 5 years ago

Simply substituting fake meat for real meat isn't improving anyone's lives.

This seems like a really impractical position. I'd rather we succeed than fantasize.

tssva• 5 years ago

I have never tried Beyond Meat and maybe I should give it a try but I am hesitant because of my experience with Impossible burgers. Obviously they must taste similar to meat and be tasty to the majority of people, but to me they taste nothing like meat and are quite disgusting. I know a few others that have the same reaction while most people at worse seem to think they taste like a low quality burger. I wonder what is in them that causes some like myself to have such a negative reaction to them and how large that percentage of people is.

dec0dedab0de4• 5 years ago

I don't think they taste like meat, but i think they're both pretty good.

pdx6• 5 years ago

Impossible burger tastes like it is engineered. It isn’t terrible but in San Francisco, it isn’t any less expensive at a typical non-chain burger joint. I also had digestive issues, though I have only had it once so I can’t claim it was the IB.

Veggie burgers just seem like a healthier, more delicious option, and a known quantity if I want to skip the beef.

nafizh• 5 years ago

I feel the price is still quite high for daily consumption. For example, 3 lbs of impossible ground meat is ~50$, so per pound comes in about ~16$ (data from impossible website). Real ground beef, even when you buy high quality will be around 7-8$ per pound.

tommoor2• 5 years ago

It has been high but it's already coming down, I don't know how permanently. Currently Impossible is:

- Costco: $16 for 2lbs

- Trader Joes: $5.99 for 12oz

therealmarv5• 5 years ago

This brand was tested by German magazine called "Öko-Test" on their ingredients. Also not for the first time. It got a BAD review again because it contains too much mineral oil in it (could have various reasons, packaging of ingredients or oily manufacturing machines) and 20g fat per 100g "meat".

So it's unhealthy on mineral oil (MOSH) which can easily accumulate in your body and fat percentage.

One of the sources which you can Google translate:

https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/food/beyond-mea...

Another English article:

http://www.ezineblog.org/2020/12/12/beyond-meat-fails-the-te...

mathgorges• 5 years ago

The fat percentage criticism strikes me as a bit odd.

At least where I am (USA) ground meat is categorized by its fat percentage and 20% fat is the standard I usually see in the supermarket.

I guess what I'm saying is: 20% is indeed a high fat percentage, but it's also the typical fat percentage for conventional meat so it feels disingenuous to use it to criticize plant-based meats.

pwinnski4• 5 years ago

80/20 is very typical for ground beef, although some people shop specifically for 85/15 or even 90/10. I find the 90/10 lacks flavor.

rarefied_tomato• 5 years ago

The discussion of the fat percentage misses the relevant concern. Mineral oil, unlike vegetable or animal fat, is a petroleum product and carcinogen that bioaccumulates in body fat.

The oekotest.de link also discusses methylcellulose as a cause of indigestion (a symptom mentioned in this thread), and the presence of genetically modified soy. GM crops are a concern because of their tolerance to high pesticide levels.

blackearl2• 5 years ago

Totally depends on how you're using it. A burger over flame needs that extra fat to stay moist or you'll get a sad, dry burger. Making tacos on the other hand makes it gush out when eating and grossly congealed when refrigerated.

mcintyre1994• 5 years ago

Are you talking about minced beef? I buy that at 5% fat in the UK, and that’s not anywhere fancy.

atombender• 5 years ago

You may want the primary source, Öko-Test [1], here. Your two links are really unclear about what they mean.

It's evident from the Öko-Test article that they are referring to contamination ("residue" of mineral oil, as they call it). Unfortunately, the published results are behind a paywall, and they don't explain in the article just how significant the contamination is. For all we know, it could be an insignificant amount. It's also unclear if they tested any meat products for similar types of contamination.

[1] https://www.oekotest.de/essen-trinken/Vegane-Burger-im-Test-...

read_if_gay_• 5 years ago

Here they tested ground meat:

https://www.oekotest.de/essen-trinken/11-gemischte-Hackfleis...

No mineral oil AFAICT, but instead you’re dealing with germ issues.

zozin• 5 years ago

HN masses cheering on the success of Soylent Red or Soylent Yellow?? Just eat less meat if you think meat production is bad/bad for the planet, don't cheer on meat substitutes, which are just processed foods made from entirely processed ingredients.

Eating meat for every meal is not good for you, but you can bet that Beyond and Impossible will advertise themselves as something that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Enjoy your industrial slop, I'll just make a salad and eat meat a few days a week.

mft_5• 5 years ago

I assume you're being downvoted because of the tone of your comment, but this is actually a really valuable point:

processed foods made from entirely processed ingredients

There's evidence that suggests the degree to which foods are processed (generally) correlates with unhealthiness. And there's also good evidence that meat is unhealthy in various ways.

So, it's difficult to know where the balance would lie: unprocessed meat, vs. processed meat-substitute?

poopoopeepee3• 5 years ago

So, it's difficult to know where the balance would lie

I would expect that soon someone will come out with a plant-based meat substitute that is marketed as "Only five ingredients, made in a kitchen not a factory".

mindcandy• 5 years ago

The founder of Impossible Foods has said that a major motivator for founding the company is

1. Global poverty is lifting. People around the world are starting to make more money. 2. A big point of pride when your family starts making money is literally putting meat on the table. 3. Our current meat production process cannot scale up to meet that demand.

But, good luck convincing billions of people coming out of extreme poverty that they're simply too late and they should give up on the dream that they can finally have meat too --for the sake of climate change. They are going to demand something. He believes plant-based meat can reach that scale at a tiny fraction of the impact if they can make it acceptably close in quality.

That's something I can cheer for.

poopoopeepee3• 5 years ago

industrial slop

Do you have a blender? Everything that comes out of a blender is industrial slop by definition. Why shame people because they allow someone to blend and form their food for them?

endisneigh• 5 years ago

Is beyond meat actually healthier than meat? If you search my question you’ll see the results are hardly conclusive.

What’s everyone’s take?

nepeckman• 5 years ago

Compared to what meat? Which animal, which cuts, which quality? Is it healthier than a really high quality meat, prepared well? Maybe not. Is it healthier than fast food "beef"? Yeah probably. Either way, environmental and moral concerns are just as relevant as health concerns when considering diet.

kilroy123• 5 years ago

I personally don't think so. I'm no scientist.

I have, however, done a LOT of studying about food because I have some serious stomach issues.

What has finally worked for me? Intermittent fasting for 15-16 hours a day — eating a low-carb diet filled with veggies.

I feel a night and day difference eating like this.

Btw I was mostly vegan and vegetarian for half a decade before this.

Take it as you will.

dec0dedab0de4• 5 years ago

I think it tastes pretty good, but I would be surprised if it were any healthier.

therealmarv5• 5 years ago

I think it's more unhealthy because it contains too much mineral oil (search my other comment) according to various tests of a German magazine.

throwaway57523• 5 years ago

Yes, you've posted this elsewhere. Your sourcing is very poor on this, and you don't make it clear that it's residue, rather than an ingredient (further, you exaggerate the hazard substantially, this is something that is consumed in large quantities for treating constipation).

To be clear, it is not an ingredient, and it is Generally Recognized as Safe in multiple applications (https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/food-addit...) and it's pretty obvious from the product this is food equipment lubrication.

mft_5• 5 years ago

This is a reasonable look at exactly this question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMGV_dBTE-k

(no affiliation, just a subscriber)

mpalczewski• 5 years ago

A completely natural product eaten by humans for millenia, vs a new factory produced goo.

I prefer real food over fake.

dilap3• 5 years ago

Personally, I very much doubt it.

Meat is an ancient food. We've evolved as hunter-gatheres, with most of our calories coming from hunting. It would be very surprising if we were not well-adapted to eating a lot of meat. Modern hunter-gatherer tribes which eat a lot of meat, like the Hadza, have excellent health.

Something like Beyond Meat is novel; it may well be OK, but I'd certainly exercise a lot of caution before trusting it.

Another way to look at the question, while incomplete, is just to look at the breakdown of the nutrients. Per cronometer.com, here's specimen A:

https://imgur.com/a/uEWhL7E

and specimen B:

https://imgur.com/a/zcAXeya

Which of those looks healthier to you?

To me, they look pretty similar, except for A has a lot more PUFA, and a lot less vitamin B. There is a lot of controversy about PUFA, but my belief is too much of it is one of the main causes of disease in people eating "Western-style" diets.

So I'd guess specimen B is healthier; that's the cow burger.

(Tangentially, is there a good website to easily share pngs? Imgur compression is pretty brutal for text stuff.)

throwaway57523• 5 years ago

"Hunter-Gatherers"

There is a great deal of misinformation about hunter-gather diets: https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers... or https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-ha... (I didn't invest much effort in finding illustrative links, there are many more, and academic research).

Walking around constantly and digging up/harvesting edible plants, insects, fungi, possibly carrion, and the occasional meat (including organs) is much more likely.

Most of our ancestors' calories didn't come from hunting in most areas. Those that did had lifestyles so different from a modern one that it makes no sense to compare them.

theNJR4• 5 years ago

This conversation needs to be higher up. It's strange how much unbridled enthusiasm there is for fake meat within the first page of comments here.

I would agree, strongly, with your assessment of PUFAs. They are even harder to eliminate from ones diet than sugar. They are in most of what one eats that they aren't making from base ingredients.

thomasfromcdnjs2• 5 years ago

How anyone thinks some corporate processed meat is healthy than natural animal meat/fats that we have eaten since forever, makes me feel like I am living in crazy land.

People are probably so sick right now that they can't taste the difference, nor is their mind healthy enough to comprehend how ludicrous the proposition is.

whalesalad3• 5 years ago

Bummer - the Impossible burger is 100x better than Beyond Meat. I've tried the stuff at Del Taco too and it is pretty dismal. Even my veggie sister was disappointed.

legitster2• 5 years ago

I enjoy eating meat and have no plans of going off of it completely. But we eat so much of it as a culture.

And when you add up every hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted. For something healthier and cheaper too!

And I know people blast tech companies for focusing too much on making things flashy and cool, but the people who are making electric cars and fake meat cool are the ones who are going to save our asses while we were busy scolding people for not trying harder to enjoy brown rice.

exyi2• 5 years ago

Beyond Meat is not like tofu or so, it is designed to be unrecognizable from meat by tasting it - so you won't have to give on our beloved meat. I also don't want to go with a vegan diet just because "environment", but having a reasonably priced substituent which does not contain tortured animals and has lower env. impact - then just why not.

legitster2• 5 years ago

I've consumed a lot of Beyond and Impossible, and it's good! But still a far way from unrecognizable.

In fact, one thing they have made me appreciate is how good some of the "traditional" meat substitutes are. I actually quite like Boca and Garden Burgers et al!

Still, the once or twice a year I go to a steakhouse and get a nice medium rare steak - we're a long, long way off from that.

gowld5• 5 years ago

Beeyond is not like real meat at all, it's just more obviously "imitation meat" than soy. I don't know why fast restaurants don't just serve tofu like Asian restaurants -- it's cheaper and tastes just as good when they cook in a sauce. USA mass culture's fear of tofu is bizarre.

scottLobster2• 5 years ago

Yeah and the health arguments tend to fall apart when you get into fast-food/highly processed crap territory, which probably accounts for a large portion of meat consumption in the developed world. Eating less of that stuff is probably a good thing.

That said quality meat is a good source of various nutrients and amino acids that can be difficult to get from plant-based sources, and fish in particular can be farmed very sustainably. I would never consider cutting meat out of my diet.

stephenr4• 5 years ago

fast-food/highly processed crap territory, which probably accounts for a large portion of meat consumption in the developed world

A large portion of animal by-products, almost certainly. I doubt that a lot of what fast-food joints use, would be considered "meat" before it was processed.

Nobody is asking their local butcher for the Cows eyeballs and asshole.

mywittyname3• 5 years ago

This reminds me of how my dad would always blast taco bell for using filler in their beef. But from my perspective, it's tastes good and the filler makes it cheaper (and probably healthier).

I think you're right, most processed meat could be replaced partially, or entirely with vegetable proteins without anyone really noticing. The last time I had baked a frozen, breaded chicken, it tasted like little more than grease and pepper. I'm certain a plant substitute could be found that would maintain the flavor of nothingness and be suitable for dipping in honey mustard.

The current issue, I think, is price. Vegetarian substitutes I've seen are more expensive than the meat based products.

mleonhard3• 5 years ago

The secret to enjoying brown rice is to add some sweet/sticky/"glutinous" rice to it. A good recipe:

1. 600 g brown rice

2. 200 g sticky rice

3. Mix the dry rices together. Use a spoon to avoid a sticky rice layer on the bottom.

3. 1200 mL water

4. Cook on "rice" mode in a 3-quart Instant-Pot. Makes about 15 120 mL (0.5 cup) servings. These freeze nicely in containers. You can heat one up in 1:30 in a 1500 W microwave.

redisman7• 5 years ago

I've turned to mainly a restaurant meat eater. My day to day protein and fats are mainly from plants now. Especially garbage fast food meats really don't need to be from animals. If I feel like a long smoked brisket or carnitas or a steak or game meats, well there just isn't any meaningful analog so I don't feel too bad about indulging every once in a while.

piva00• 5 years ago

Exactly what I've become over the past 5 years. I only let myself to eat meat as a treat, in a very good restaurant at least.

I grew up in a culture that is completely meat-centric (Brazil) and I moved to Sweden some 5-6 years ago, vegetarian and vegan options here are plenty and somewhat tasty. It's been pretty easy to cut down my meat consumption to zero on a day-to-day basis and save meat for special occasions.

hammock6• 5 years ago

when you add up every hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted. For something healthier and cheaper too!

Read the labels more closely the next time you eat that hot pocket or frozen sausage pizza. A large number of these products already have "textured vegetable protein" (TVP) or other meat substitute in them to pad out the protein on the label and reduce overall cost to produce.

For example, here are the ingredients for Digiorno Meat Lover's (you may have to scroll and click "Nutrition" dropdown. They call it "TEXTURED SOY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE": https://www.goodnes.com/digiorno/products/rising-crust-three...

m8s• 5 years ago

Ingredients

ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, AND FOLIC ACID), WATER, LOW-MOISTURE PART-SKIM MOZZARELLA CHEESE (CULTURED PART-SKIM MILK, SALT, ENZYMES), TOMATO PASTE, COOKED SEASONED PIZZA TOPPING MADE WITH PORK AND CHICKEN, BHA, BHT AND CITRIC ACID ADDED TO HELP PROTECT FLAVOR (PORK, MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, WATER, TEXTURED SOY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SPICES, SALT, SUGAR, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, PAPRIKA, NATURAL PORK FLAVOR [MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, PORK FAT, NATURAL FLAVORS, PORK STOCK, GELATIN, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, THIAMINE HYDROCHLORIDE, SUNFLOWER OIL, PROPYL GALLATE], SPICE EXTRACTIVES, BHA, BHT, CITRIC ACID), PEPPERONI MADE WITH PORK, CHICKEN AND BEEF (PORK, MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, BEEF, SALT, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF SPICES, DEXTROSE, PORK STOCK, LACTIC ACID STARTER CULTURE, OLEORESIN OF PAPRIKA, FLAVORING, SODIUM NITRITE, SODIUM ASCORBATE, PAPRIKA, PROCESSED WITH NATURAL SMOKE FLAVOR, BHA, BHT, CITRIC ACID TO HELP PROTECT FLAVOR), COOKED BEEF PIZZA TOPPING (BEEF, WATER, TEXTURED SOY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, DEHYDRATED POTATOES WITH SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF SALT, HYDROLYZED CORN PROTEIN, SOY PROTEIN AND WHEAT PROTEIN, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, MALTODEXTRIN, SPICE, NATURAL GRILL FLAVOR [FROM SUNFLOWER OIL], GARLIC POWDER, COOKED IN PORK FAT OR BEEF FAT OR VEGETABLE OIL), SUGAR, WHEAT GLUTEN, 2% OR LESS OF VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN OIL AND/OR CORN OIL), DEGERMINATED WHITE CORN MEAL, YEAST, SALT, DEGERMINATED YELLOW CORN MEAL, DATEM, BAKING SODA, SPICES, WHEAT FLOUR, ENZYMES, DRIED GARLIC, ASCORBIC ACID (DOUGH CONDITIONER).

gowld5• 5 years ago

If TVP is cheaper than meat as an ingeredient, then why does buying TVP product at the grocery cost ~4x more than buying meat?

gnopgnip• 5 years ago

Using soy protein or other substitutes like this is relatively rare. Hot pockets use real cheese meat. The same is true of most food people buy at grocery stores or restaurants. Even hotdogs are generally either all beef, or a mixture of chicken and pork.

stephenr4• 5 years ago

hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted

But then what will they do with all the eyeballs, assholes, and cartilage?

I'd imagine that the amount of actual animal tissue humans would otherwise consume, that ends up in any of those products you mentioned is negligible.

somehnrdr14726• 5 years ago

I started using Impossible in any beef recipe which highly seasons or sauces the meat, and can't tell the difference. Or don't care enough about the difference. Talking hamburger helpers, manwhiches, casseroles, that sort of thing.

The price of Impossible and Beyond per pound is still higher than real beef, probably due to government subsidies artificially reducing the cost of beef. Once the equation flips I expect just about every fast food menu item, freezer food, and quick prep box to switch to these new vegetable meats.

There is a snowball effect happening. More and more places and products are offering a meat alternative because Impossible and Beyond are 1:1 recipe substitutes. This brings the cost down as manufacturing processes can scale up. Confidence is growing and taste isn't suffering. Toward a vegetarian future, economics will succeed where ethics and wellness have failed.

teekert2• 5 years ago

Yeah, recently I made a burger using lentils, with the lettuce, Ketchup and Mayonnaise added, the kids didn't even notice any difference... I did, but it was still pretty nice!

Black1013• 5 years ago

And their stock dropped 5% today.... good time to buy!

hahahahe3• 5 years ago

This was already discussed last week and it was essentially a PR stunt.

exabrial4• 5 years ago

Personally I avoid their stuff. I'd rather have a locally raised steak from one of my neighbors who loves their cattle and their job.

Eating highly processed food just isn't good for you.

beisner• 5 years ago

To be fair, neither is red meat. Unclear which is worse, though.

mikeg82• 5 years ago

Where are the studies that show grass fed red meat is bad for your health? All studies I've seen concluding red meat is a health concern are using grain finished beef.

hyperpl• 5 years ago

I agree. I once tried beyond meat by accident (some vegans were visiting and did a switcheroo on me) and it was one of the most repulsive things I had ever tasted.

cm2012• 5 years ago

Impossible burgers are way better. Can't stand beyond meat.

buzzy_hacker2• 5 years ago

The vast majority of people don’t have neighbors who lovingly raise cattle for slaughter.

exabrial4• 5 years ago

* the vast majority of people that choose to live in unpopulated coastal cities, I think you mean.

spark3k3• 5 years ago

I don't understand when farmers say they "love their cattle" but then industriously kill them at 12% of their normal lifespan. And repeat. In millions.

The meat lobby really has a grip on the culture and identity of the animal consuming public.

exabrial4• 5 years ago

Humans long ago changed the evolutionary trajectory of certain species. There are no wild horses for example, only feral.

Your argument starts from the premise that consuming meat or raising animals for slaughter is somehow wrong.

I'll continue enjoying my steak, thank you.

b3kart• 5 years ago

normal lifespan

How many animals actually grow old in the wild though, not getting eaten by a predator? At least humans have the decency to kill them first... I agree both the scale and the cruelty are important problems, but the ethical aspect isn't so clear-cut.

barbs2• 5 years ago

This is undoubtedly good news, despite what some people in these comments would have you believe.

I seriously wonder if some commenters are being paid by big meat industries to try and sway opinions of richer/more powerful people? Or perhaps it's just the tendency of HN commenters to be contrarian.

gverrilla• 5 years ago

lab food will be a very limited trend.

bredren2• 5 years ago

Beyond nutritional or environmental reasons to reduce meat consumption, there are ethical considerations about the consciousness of the animals we slaughter.

It doesn’t matter how we get people to be less reliant on factory farms, so long as we do.

We must examine every avenue that allows us to reduce the suffering of animals.

BitwiseFool• 5 years ago

Preface: I'm a hypocritical omnivore who likes animals.

If meat alternatives and lab grown meat become cheap and indistinguishable from real sources, I predict that within the span of two generations our descendants are going to look back on us as immoral savages. I use cognitive dissonance and distance from how my food is made to get over how horrible industrial farming is and how brutal life can be for livestock. They'll wonder how we were able to tolerate such brutality and all the answers come back to either 'out of sight, out of mind' or 'it's tasty'.

krrrh5• 5 years ago

I imagine this sentiment is often from seeing documentaries about the worst conditions in farming, and the general cosseting away from life and death that most of us have enjoyed.

But the farms and ranches I grew up around, and that I buy most of my meat from, never seem that brutal when I’ve visited them, and the animals seem well cared for and mostly doing their own thing on the pasture most of the time.

I wanted to take more responsibility for my consumption, so I’ve been increasingly substituting in meat that I hunt for that which I buy from farmers. The North American model of wildlife management maintains an abundance of wildlife compared to other continents, and the hunting community pours billions of dollars into land conservation and re-establishing extirpated species into their natural ranges. There’s a paradox in hunting—killing an individual animal but pouring resources and votes into maintaining populations, and the existence of that species in the face of industrial exploitation of the land. The system is set up so that the populations don’t decline year over year, the number of animals harvested by hunters is often simply subtracted from the total number of animals that would have died from starvation over winter.

The damage done to the natural environment by the sort of soy and legume monoculture that makes industrial meat substitutes profitable has its own issues, and anyone who’s lived near a farm and seen the vultures and raptors circling a freshly combined field knows that the number of rodents killed to produce a cows worth of veggie burgers is significant. I’m not arguing that we should, or could, go one way or the other, but I hope that a hundred years from now the moral certitude that you’re describing has not been adopted. We’ve been eating other animals for as long as we’ve been a species, and hunting just as long, and farming for 12,000 years. Long term, the species and environment would probable be best served by some diversity in approaches.

dfxm12• 5 years ago

They just missed the start of this Lenten season. I'm fascinated by what fast food places market when a huge chunk of their customers won't eat land or air-based meat one a day out of the week. Is Beyond Meat finally going to topple the fish sandwich?

As an aside, I did always want to try the Mc hula burger, but thanks to Vatican II, it was not long for this world and died way before I was born...

thehappypm2• 5 years ago

I love the idea of vegan meat alternatives but personally don't like Beyond's taste. It tastes too much like peas for me, doesn't get past "uncanny valley". I do like Impossible though -- Qdoba has it and it's fantastic in a burrito.

chasd003• 5 years ago

i've had it, it's not bad. It's no bone-in ribeye but it's not bad. more power to them.

chiph• 5 years ago

Same here. It's totally acceptable for something like a burger or ground meat "crumbles" for pizza and tacos. It won't replace a good steak (yet).

Their problem as a company is that the product is pretty easy to copy. And the danger there (beyond the threat to the firm) is that one of the knock-offs will be so bad that it kills the entire meat-alternative product space because of the bad reputation. Which would be a shame - anyone who has driven by the stockyards on Interstate 5 in California would appreciate reducing our supply on cattle.

dekhn2• 5 years ago

I really wanted to like Beyond Meat, but there's something about how it smells that seems... off... to me. I really want to go work there just to play with a GCMS and figure out what component smells bad to me and remove it.

Personally, I think the epitome of vegan meat replacement is Morningstar Veggie Breakfast Patties. most meat eaters I know who try them say "huh... this is pretty damn good for something that doesn't have meat in it"

redisman7• 5 years ago

We have the same taste buds. Morningstar Hot Dogs are also really good for that cheapo hotdog experience.

gowld5• 5 years ago

It's the coconut oil. Coconut oil smells terrible when cooked, like burning rust.

alacombe• 5 years ago

I just slaughtered two muttons over the week end, enjoy your highly processed fake meat while I enjoy some tasty juicy ribs !

goatcode2• 5 years ago

I wish we were neighbors :)

txsoftwaredev3• 5 years ago

How does it compare to Japanese A5 Wagyu?

redisman7• 5 years ago

A veggie meat with Wagyus fat content would be... interesting.

dannyphantom• 5 years ago

that's awesome; i'd love if Beyond could produce a nice vegetarian fish substitute as well. also hoping buying some shares wouldn't be a good short-term investment after their earnings miss.

Kharvok• 5 years ago

Almost all of livestock farming emissions come from transportation and powering the processing facilities.

See Frank M. Mitloehner at UC Davis research on methane emission from livestock.

soyftware3• 5 years ago

This paper:

https://clear.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk7876/files/inl...

References:

https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/inventory/pubs/reports/2000_2018/g...

Which says on page 17:

Livestock emissions are almost entirely CH4 generated from enteric fermentation and manure management, and most of the livestock emissions are from dairy operations.

Enteric and manure management seem fairly close, both between 11-12 million tonnes with manure management being higher by some hundred thousand.

I'm not sure what manure management is, I'm sure part of it is transportation, etc, but that's not "almost all of livestock farming emissions."

In this paper (the errata):

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987

In total, the “no animal products” scenario delivers a 28% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy relative to 2010 emissions (table S17). The scenario of a 50% reduction in animal products targeting the highest-impact producers delivers a 20% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions.

superkuh2• 5 years ago

I wish companies were not able to label and sell these textured vegetable proteins as "meat". They are great products but they are not meat and as scale increases and they become less expensive than meat there will be strong commercial profit motives to replace real meat with "* meat" for monetary reasons.

I'd strongly prefer for increased funding to isolated tissue culture methods. That way we could have real meat without the environmental or ethical issues.

ausbah• 5 years ago

there was a small push by the meat lobby to do exactly that a couple years ago [1]

I think it's a silly form of regulation. there are plenty of non-milk milk products, or "fruit flavor" things that don't have any fruit

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/technology/meat-veggie-bu...

p1necone4• 5 years ago

I think it's very silly. I as a consumer would like to buy a substitute for cows milk that is not animal based. Being forced to call it "almond juice" or something is just making my life harder (and not making anyone elses life easier).

Nobody is going to think that "almond milk" is actually the same as cows milk and accidentally buy it instead of the dairy product, so what's the problem?

(Also, almond and soy milk are not new products, they've been consumed for hundreds of years in Europe and Asia respectively)

theNJR4• 5 years ago

There were FDA rulings around the use of the word "milk". I think it went to court, and I don't recall the final ruling.

p1necone4• 5 years ago

I've never seen plant based meat labelled in a way that could trick a reasonable person into thinking it was animal meat.

I don't see what you'd gain from not allowing the word "meat" to be used - it's very clearly a product that's trying to imitate various kinds of animal meat, and I want that communicated to me efficiently.

superkuh2• 5 years ago

That's because it's more expensive than meat. Once it becomes less expensive it will be used in prepared foods without explicit or with misleading (* meat) small labels.

dqpb• 5 years ago

How does this compare to impossible burger? I didn’t like impossible burger at all.

Spooky23• 5 years ago

Gross. Replacing meat with coconut oil and pea protein is bad for the earth and bad for people.

goatcode2• 5 years ago

https://youtu.be/eoWvrcvTrZI

jordache2• 5 years ago

I tried the impossible whopper. You literally could not tell the difference between that and a normal beef whopper. I realized a lot the attributes of these commercial food products are the additions, like sauce, and toppings that contribute to that precisely calibrated flavor.

apozem• 5 years ago

My wife is vegan and let me try her Impossible Burger at a local chain. I am not vegan so she wanted to know how accurate the taste was. It tasted exactly like a frozen burger you'd cook on your backyard grill.

gowld5• 5 years ago

Only if you bury it in toppings.

kart23• 5 years ago

Impossible is really good, even the texture is nearly spot-on. However, I've found Beyond meat to give itself away pretty easily, and it has a distinctly chemical-ly, (plant?) aftertaste.

astura6• 5 years ago

I find the Beyond Meat aftertaste quite pleasing, actually. It taste kind almost herbal to me.

It's been more than two decades since I've had hamburger so I can't comment on authenticity.

null0pointer• 5 years ago

I tried the impossible whopper too and I could certainly tell the difference. It was very close, and if I wasn't paying attention I might not have noticed, but it does taste distinctly different.

Not trying to say you're wrong, just want to provide another datapoint. I tried it about a year ago, so maybe they've updated their recipe since then. I would encourage anyone reading to give it a try see what they think.

jordache2• 5 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if you do a back to back A/B comparison, one can identify diffferences. However, soeone who doesn't hasn't eaten a whopper in years, it was essentially how the whopper tasted to me.

That is sufficient of a bar to for a meat replacement I'd say.

bitcharmer• 5 years ago

You can definitely tell the difference and anyone with taste buds will tell you the same.

It's not that I'm against plant-based diet. I will totally switch once the experience becomes indistinguishable. We're just not there yet. No reason to pretend otherwise.

megablast2• 5 years ago

How about bringing the price down now??

znpy• 5 years ago

uhm... i'm not against this thing per se, but last time i tried a beyond meat burger... it didn't taste like meat at all.

at least, not the kind of meat that usually goes in a burger. it tasted more like entrails/chitterlings/pluck (not sure what the correct word would be, i'm not a native speaker of english).

we'll see, I guess.

AzzieElbab• 5 years ago

Wasn’t KFC forbidden to call their chicken “chicken” already?

emrah• 5 years ago

In my later years, I tend to be more skeptical of brilliant/magical solutions. I genuinely hope "Beyond Meat" doesn't turn out to be more trouble than good in the long run. Then again fast food meat isn't that great anyway so the bar is pretty low to begin with.

dleslie2• 5 years ago

My kids _love_ Beyond Beef; to the point that they ask for "the real beef" when I cook "beef" items, like burgers and meatballs, with literal real beef.

I've tried the other fake meats on them; like Lightlife and St. Ives. They won't touch it, and I find cooking with the other fake meats is just ... nowhere near as good.

Beyond beef is awesome. I wish it were cheaper.

RedComet• 5 years ago

barf emoji

pojzon• 5 years ago

This sounds like a good news but at the bqck pf my head I still have humorous SP episode about the same.

Hope the quality of the food will be better than what they serve now.

ecommerceguy• 5 years ago

I tried the one from Burger King and was very off-put by the flavor. Of course I don't like beats too much either... so maybe that's why I found the flavors unpleasant. JM2C

astura6• 5 years ago

At least in the US Burger King does not sell Beyond Burger made by Beyond Meat, they sell the Impossible Burger made by Impossible Foods. They are two different products from two different companies.

Judgmentality2• 5 years ago

I'm not asking this to rain on the parade - I love what these guys are doing but I have a question about their process and the ethics of it.

So in order to grow the meat, they have to culture the cells in bovine fetal serum, which they get from cow fetuses on their way to slaughter. My question is how much meat is grown per fetus?

Cell-grown meat, I told him, would be spurred on by synthetic serums refined from the crude system currently used, where cells are bathed in fetal bovine serum. The serum, which promotes cell growth, is collected from the hearts of calf fetuses found in pregnant cattle gone to slaughter.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/mar/14/impossible-burg...

jtdev6• 5 years ago

Wow, that does not sound like something I want to eat.

astura6• 5 years ago

You entirely missed the context of that quote, which was preceded by "vegan meat replacements today, meat grown from cells tomorrow."

"Cell-grown meat" isn't what Beyond or Impossible are doing - what they are doing is "vegan meat replacements," replicating the taste of meat using vegetable sources. Neither company is trying to grow real meat from cell cultures in a lab, which is what you're talking about.

Judgmentality2• 5 years ago

Oh wow, I was confusing them with another company. Thank you for the clarification.

boring_twenties2• 5 years ago

For me personally, the Beyond burger was wholly unsatisfying. I much prefer veggie burgers that don't bother pretending to be meat, such as the ones Trader Joe's sells frozen. In fact, those have become my standard late-night meal. (As someone who used to be a "meat with every single meal" kind of guy.)

xyst• 5 years ago

going long with $BYND

trashface2• 5 years ago

Great, another way to load up on Omega 6 acids via vegetable oil. Exactly what Americans need. Hello obesity and inflammation disorders. The for-profit medical industry in the US will love this.

I'm a vegetarian, so it doesn't affect me too much, but you meat eaters may be better off with moderate consumption of actual (good quality) meat.

CyanBird• 5 years ago

So this is the next debate point from vegans etc towards meat eaters?

"don't eat that fake meat bs bc it is harmful to you, eat" natural meat instead "?

Don't you see that it is a bit against the general best interest of ppl? As to even begin most of the population are not eating organic meat by a long shot

philliphaydon• 5 years ago

By good quality I don’t think the OP meant organic. But meat that hasn’t been processed like in fast food...

flipcoder• 5 years ago

"don't eat that fake meat bs bc it is harmful to you, eat" natural meat instead "?

Yes.

danShumway2• 5 years ago

If you're worried about health, then skip the fake meat debate and just tell people to stop eating at McDonald's.

People are comparing these patties to premium, unprocessed meat, and that's just not what McDonald's has ever been serving. I don't think anyone is going to McDonald's or Pizza Hut and thinking to themselves "I need to make sure this burger doesn't have too many trans fats." The fake meat on your pizza is not as big of a health problem as, for example, the massive amount of thick-bread pizza crust and sweetened tomato sauce.

So it's a bit like arguing about the health benefits of substituting almond milk in a chocolate fudge recipe. You may have a legitimate point, but the context around that point matters.

pid_0• 5 years ago

Jskamalakdjekebwhwjwj

SavageBeast• 5 years ago

BYND to the MOON! [diamond hands emoji here]

wait_a_minute• 5 years ago

It's very interesting to see that the veganism debate will be settled not by anyone actually winning the argument, but by innovation once again obviating an unnecessary debate.

Humans can fundamentally do anything! Dream big.

wdb• 5 years ago

Personally, I don't understand why they need to call it meat or vegetarian butcher while it isn't. I understand it's accepted by the EU courts but it feels odd.

I typically order my vegan meals/recipes from Riverford (https://www.riverford.co.uk) and Abel and Cole which are nice but I do think I need to swap it out occasionally with some vegetarian meals. I do think they could have some more mashes in their recipe collection

3131s3• 5 years ago

The Chinese are big on this "mock" meat too... which as a vegetarian I almost always find disgusting. Just give me legumes, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, leaves, roots, etc.

Tofu and seitan are about the only processed foods that I ever eat.

subungual3• 5 years ago

I think it's just easier to call it meat because it makes clear what dietary/textural/taste role it is supposed to fill. The spot is already cut out in people's schemata. Maybe language will shift and a new word will emerge to better characterize substitutes in the future, or maybe the definition will ultimately be subsumed by replacements. Honestly, it's not ever really bothered me, so maybe it's just a question of individual language aesthetic preferences.

I'll give you that using "butcher" is a little weird, though for most places I've seen do that it's a marketing gimmick.

MrMan• 5 years ago

I am happy about this but I don't understand the fake meat thing. Our household reduced our meat consumption by 95 percent, we don't use any fake meat. It is highly processed and to us doesn't taste very good.

chovybizzass2• 5 years ago

if they slip that shit in their food without telling us I will be very upset.

thomasfromcdnjs2• 5 years ago

What I think is worse.

Is that they call it "meat".

People who aren't that switched on will start eating it, when there is no proof it is actually good for you.

I'd like to see a 10-20 year study before we just accept that Beyond Meat is actually good for long term health.

Supermarkets are putting this stuff in the "meat" section too.

Poor old person who can barely see that actually needs real tried and test nutrition.

Kind of evil if you ask me but that is why this comment is at the very bottom.

adtac4• 5 years ago

They need to rename peanut butter too, it's not actually butter :/

bradgessler2• 5 years ago

Have you ever eaten a burger at McDonald’s and thought, “wow! This beef is juicy, sweet, succulent, and delicious!”? Probably never, so it’s great to see these plant based alternatives that taste “just as good” become available.

There will always be demand for high quality beef, chicken, and pork ... and no substitute either.

ghayes• 5 years ago

While I largely agree, I would argue there might be a tipping point where people eat so little animal-based meat that the majority of people become vegetarian, and then the norms shift such that traditional meat is treated like we currently treat fois gras.

bradgessler2• 5 years ago

Totally! Meat could become a decadence. I think that would be OK.

jasonv• 5 years ago

Beyond < Impossible

victorfonseca• 5 years ago

I feel ashamed to fart after reading the comments.

dadrian• 5 years ago

BeyondMeat determined they should not try to out-pizza the Hut

mdpopescu• 5 years ago

Yay, more poison in our diet. What's the worst that could happen?

ricardobayes5• 5 years ago

As a person who likes to research and optimize things, I have optimized meat out of my life. At first I ate "pareto-plant-based" meaning 80% plant-based, 20% meat, usually at social gatherings. Then I realised I eat meat only to please others and to "fit in", so I gave up on that and accepted being an outcast. I'm really thankful for remote work so I don't have to pretend anymore. I never called myself "vegan" even though I eat like one because people think I'm judging them or something. They hated me just for existing.

yc-kraln• 5 years ago

I think it's amazing that Beyond Meat has managed to convince everyone that their extremely complicated, oily, fatty, plant-protein based burgers are any sort of ersatz for beef.

I have tried burgers made with it, they taste fine, but I can't believe that it is any healthier than beef. And I don't believe that a more expensive product has any chance of offsetting beef demand.

dagorenouf• 5 years ago

I’m a 31yo heavy meat eater. Pretty shocked that we’re in the process of making these vegetable oil compounds go mainstream. I feel like an old man who doesn’t want to get with the times. I did not see it coming.

unixhero• 5 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/futurology called, it wants its prediction back!

devops000• 5 years ago

The stock hasn't moved much after this news

wooger5• 5 years ago

Yuck. Nasty fake shit full of dubiously sourced powders from China, and more fat than 10 real burgers.

To replace meat with something demonstrably less healthy is a ridiculous endeavor.

All people regardless of the restrictive hipster diet they follow should know that eating ingredients in as un-processed a state as possible (fresh meat & vegetables for one) is the way forward for health.

This is the opposite.

ChildOfChaos• 5 years ago

The Quorn KFC burger is absolutely fine though here in the UK. I'm guessing this is just the in the US?

efiecho• 5 years ago

After trying both Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat, without the stuff being drenched in sauce and other burger ingredients, just the plain "meat", I must say that I don't like it one bit. It smells like canned cat food and taste nothing like real meat to me.

I will switch to fake meat when I'm unable to sense any difference between something like a Greater Omaha ribeye and a fake substitute, not a day before :)

gadders• 5 years ago

I'm looking forward to when lab-grown meat becomes widely available. I'd rather eat that than vegetables, and both would presumably be equally environmentally friendly.

thorin4• 5 years ago

I'm not sure about these companies, in terms of getting massive uptake of meat alternatives they seem fine. However their product is heavily processed food, with ingredients you don't really need to be eating and massively marked up in prices. Other than marketing, what are you really gaining over a 3rd world diet of rice and beans/lentils.

Hey you could even prepare your own dinner from a selection of fresh vegetables and fruit (and if you're feeling absolutely crazy you could add a few eggs, milk, meat, fish or grains).

This seems like it solves a couple of problems and ignores/creates a whole load more. People who are content eating all their meals from McDonalds etc have their own issues, most of which can't be fixed by meat substitues.

whywhywhywhy2• 5 years ago

what are you really gaining over a 3rd world diet of rice and beans/lentils.

The working class doesn't want to eat beans/lentils they want to eat McDonalds and Taco Bell. This way we can swap out the meat and force them to eat meat substitute for the supposed greater good and eventually save money and the environment while we do it.

They're already being sold turkey meat when they order pork in some stores (Subway in particular does this) so what does it matter if it's just all switched out for artificial meat.

thorin4• 5 years ago

"The working class doesn't want to eat beans/lentils they want to eat McDonalds and Taco Bell"

Is suppose this is the bit I don't get. In the UK I feel like the working class see McDonalds as a "treat", which they might have once a week and the kids will get a toy or an ice cream.

It's way way cheaper to spend the 10-20 pounds I'd spend for 3 or 4 meals from McDonald's on real food. I could easily make a good roast dinner with dessert or similar meal for the whole family for that kind of money. It just feels like laziness to me, which we're all guilty of and I'd probably be even more guilty of if I had less free time and poorer living conditions.

I'd still argue that working class don't "want" to eat at McDonald's on a regular basis, not in Europe anyway.

tim333• 5 years ago

There is a burger place doing beyond meat burgers round the corner from my flat - Neat Burger, started by Lewis Hamilton. Not bad really - probably comparable to a basic McDonalds burger though a fair bit pricer. - article on the restaurant: https://vegnews.com/2020/12/lewis-hamilton-s-vegan-restauran...

teekert2• 5 years ago

I'm a noob but why does this news not correlate with an increase in the bynd stock's price?

Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

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