Can protein startups and their investors take on Big Cow?

Hampton Creek is the makers of "Just Mayo" which is talked about in this article. What isn't said is that they've been on the shelves at Target up until 2 months ago when Target pulled all their products for an unknown reason. Speculation has it that Hellmans was very upset that Just Mayo was disrupting the mayo business and delivered falsified claims to Target trying to get them to pull the products. It's a real slugfest right now.

On another note, Beyond Meat's founder was featured on "How I Built This", a favorite podcast for many HN'ers.

I recommend eating tofu as tofu, not as a fake meat. It's delicious if you know how to prepare it.

Several startups are trying to grow real meat in vitro. Memphis Meats (which is in San Francisco, not Tennessee) has succeeded in growing chicken in vitro from stem cells. Mark Post at the University of Maastricht has been able to grow beef in vitro. This stuff tastes like meat from animals. It's the production cost that's the problem.

That's going to be the good stuff. Further downscale are the processed soy products. These are Soy Extender 2.0; textured vegetable protein processed to make it taste more like meat. You can buy soy hamburger patties now, under the Beyond Meat brand. Whole Foods carries them. Anyone tried one?

I had a startup that made software for meat processing companies. It is pretty horrifying being in meat plants but most people are not yet at the point where they can accept not eating it. In my experience I feel better eating occasional offal and grass-fed meat than I do regularly eating meat of any other variety or eliminating it entirely. It is one thing to claim moral high ground and simply avoid eating meat, and we can absolutely do away with it on a taste basis based on what is coming out of vegan restaurants these days, but the cultural shift will take a long time and "good enough" is clearly a higher bar than tofu. I suspect it is somewhat like electric cars. A more political issue than we like to admit and something where assuming the products were comparable in price/taste/texture/experience people might opt for the socially concious choice, that threshold simple isn't there for the majority of people yet. A worthy pursuit but one that is not necessarily limited to startups. Big Food and one off restaurants are pursuing these ideas more fundamentally than anyone else is right now and I suspect that they will be the eventual winners of the race to good enough. The meat industry is fundamentally antiquated the way it is setup now and will simply shrink down to as demand wanes, or more likely just switch to exporting.

I really do think there is a pretty sise-able market at least in California for people looking to reduce their intake of meat but not wanting to go full vegan. People who like the taste of a good burger but want to be healthier (more fiber, less fat and less antibiotics) and reduce the environmental impacts. I am one of them.

I think one of the simplest solutions would be to have a different line of products under a different brand name which had a mixture of plant based meat alternative (i.e. Boca or Impossible Burger) to actual meat in the burger. That way you get the taste of meat but the substrate is fiber based.

The level of actual meat could be adjusted like they do fat content for ground beef (i.e. I'm feeling sorta vegan today so I'm gonna go 75% plant based today).

The one thing I never understood is American vegetarian restaurants who serve tofu steaks as the entire dish. This looks awful:

http://www.pbs.org/food/fresh-tastes/asian-baked-tofu/

Asian people always eat tofu blended in with a bunch of meat and vegetables for the actual flavor. Here are some examples:

http://thewoksoflife.com/category/recipes/tofu/

http://thewoksoflife.com/2014/03/ma-po-tofu-real-deal/

I don't really understand why this stuff is in the news so much these days. Boca burgers have been around forever and they taste fine - I tried Impossible Foods and it's at best a marginal improvement. And as for mayo, Vegennaise has been around for a while too and it's totally fine, other than getting a bit soupy when the jar is almost empty.

I hope so. If we can make meat or something really similar without killing animals, I would consider this a huge win for lessening the misery of the universe.

Okay, am I the only one finding these 'Big Industry' names kind of ridiculous now? Big Pharma, yeah that works. Big Tech? Sure I guess.

But calling these companies Big Cow just sounds utterly ridiculous. It just doesn't work at all.