Meet the startups racing to reinvent the meal | Hacker News Reader

Meet the startups racing to reinvent the meal

theguardian.com

35 pointskhuknows38 comments

The idea of finding ways to make animal food products without the moral issues and environmental impact is pretty interesting.

But there’s a much simpler way to avoid the moral issues and environmental impact of eating animals and animal products... eat vegetarian foods. Or simply, make a larger proportion of your diet vegetarian.

And don’t waste time trying to simulate animal products (veggie burgers, faux-turkey, etc.) It’ll never measure up in the end and distract from the really good and tasty vegetarian (or mostly vegetarian) stuff.

>And don’t waste time trying to simulate animal products (veggie burgers, faux-turkey, etc.) It’ll never measure up in the end and distract from the really good and tasty vegetarian (or mostly vegetarian) stuff.

Man, I hear a lot of vegetarians say this... Just as a mental heuristic, you might be able to realize that your experience differs from the experiences of the people who make up the market for these products seeing as you were already able to go vegetarian...

If you need a high calorie, high protein diet, it's hard to go vegetarian- especially if you're allergic to one of the 7 common allergens (nuts, dairy, soy, wheat, eggs...) - an allergy to one makes it difficult, two or more almost impossible. The simulated animal products (beyond burgers, impossible burgers, memphis meats) are my great hope here and I buy the available ones as much as possible. But it's really difficult to reach at least 2.5k calories and 80g of protein per day without just shoveling spoonfuls of quinoa and beans or soylent or protein powder. It's hard to reach a lot of meat eaters if you're just talking about taste and not about macro nutrient requirements.

I'm not a vegetarian, BTW.

I'm sure you'll appreciate the chance to adjust your own mental heuristics. ;)

I'm just pointing out there are vegetarian dishes I enjoy every bit as much as a fat juicy steak, but not anything created and marketed as a meat substitute. I mention it because reasonable people can come to the conclusion that products created as animal food product substitutes are the best way to ease into eating a more vegetarian diet. But as far as I can tell that's not true.

>I'm just pointing out there are vegetarian dishes I enjoy every bit as much as a fat juicy steak, but not anything created and marketed as a meat substitute.

Yup. Not a vegetarian and I feel the same way.

Ditto.

I also don’t like anything peddled as a fake fruit or vegetable. (Ok, never had the latter, but fake fruit juice abounds. )

Abstinence has never worked whether it is sex or environmental sustainability. We have to find solutions that factor in human nature. Humans, as a species, will not stop having sex nor will they stop eating meat.

yes, factor in human nature but first understand what it is. there are 360 million vegetarians in India, for example. eating meat isn't coded in our DNA.

Actually it is in the DNA. The shape of our teeth are both for eating meat and vegetables. India is the only example I am aware of with a culture of vegetarianism. That begs the question, why? One possibility is religion.

Many human cultures include the concept of slavery, that doesn't mean it is morally acceptable.

Coded into our DNA doesn't mean it is morally acceptable.

That's like saying humans will never stop raping and murdering because of human nature so we have to be realistic and find solutions that don't involve just not raping and murdering people.

I'm confused, there have never been a large group of people who would rape and murder. I'm not convinced it's even an order of magnitude lower now than it was 1k years ago (or 10k). The largest majority have also been omnivores (I'd include insects, eggs, and fish) for almost the entirety of that time.

It doesn't look like we're going to either solve omnivorism or perfect non-violent world peace any time soon. On the other hand, I suppose a Matrix-like utopian hellscape could bring us both.

Not really. There is a very small percentage of the population that will always do those things, but the only time that happens on a large scale is if something more fundamental is wrong. Fix that fundamental problem (e.g. lack of food and water) and people behave better.

I'll add if you want a lot of the flavors of animal products back, MSG goes a long way.

Just last night I tried making vegetarian "beef" tacos with spiced and lightly baked quinoa as the beef, and with some MSG thrown in I swear it's better than real beef.

> And don’t waste time trying to simulate animal products (veggie burgers, faux-turkey, etc.) It’ll never measure up in the end and distract from the really good and tasty vegetarian (or mostly vegetarian) stuff.

I agree that the veggie meat substitutes don't do a good job of imitating meat, but (for example) Boca Burgers are actually pretty tasty on their own merits, despite being sold as a "meat replacement".

I tried going vegetarian a while back but I am naturally skinny and was loosing weight. I find meat makes for more interesting cooking.

And your suggestion of vegetarianism should really be vegan as caged hen eggs are one of the worst forms of factory farming I can think of

Interesting that Soylent did not get mentioned since they once seemed to be the poster child for this movement. Are they still a player?

This is an article about the movement to produce similar foods to ones that already exist without the need for animals; specifically, they discuss the stables of milk, eggs, and meat. The people in this space are not gunning for "something that happens to vaguely serve the same nutrition goal", but are trying to provide stuff like egg whites that are so similar to real ones they can substitute when baking and meat designed for people who, well, actually like eating actual meat.

Soylent is part of a mostly unrelated movement that instead tries to provide a fundamentally different premise for the food itself. I would not expect Soylent to be mentioned in this article. Reading your comment and other peoples' responses, I had assumed I would be seeing their competitors (mealsquares, huel, etc.) be brought up, but no one from the entire space Soylent is in was mentioned, as that just isn't what this article is about. Maybe the title was confusing from that perspective, as this is more "reengineering the meal" instead of "reinventing the meal"?

I think the bout of people getting sick in late 2016 / early 2017 dampened enthusiasm significantly.

They're just not the "latest and greatest" any more. They've been around for awhile and it's just business as usual. They still have a number of consumers and they just started selling in brick-and-mortar stores (I believe it was WalMart).

Soylent is sold at Walmart now, so it seems they’re still around. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Soylent-Meal-Replacement-Drink-Ca...

This seems like a classic case of what a good coder would call "premature optimization."

Nutritional science, is far, far from settled. It's not even clear that is such a thing as a baseline, universally-applicable nutritional paradigm. For instance, there could be potentially large deviations based based on genetic and epigenetic factors.

It's amazing there isn't more disruption here:

- Everyone has to eat, but it takes a good amount of time to prep, cook, set a table, eat, clear the take and wash dishes

- There seems to be broad awareness of what makes a healthy diet, yet lots of difficulty adhering to one

- People have different tastes and given the choice will rarely choose the same food as those eating with them

Eating out satisfies the variety problem, but not always the time or health one.

A meal in a box somewhat helps the time problem (little prep) and maybe the health one, but not the variety.

There is no 10x solution yet, but it's not hard to think of one like meals in Star Trek that are custom and ready at the press of a button.

"- People have different tastes and given the choice will rarely choose the same food as those eating with them"

There are social dynamics at play here, that you've probably felt yourself: People will feel the need to choose a different thing even it it's not their first choice, because choosing the same thing feels awkward (In the US at least, I've heard other cultures have the opposite dynamic, choosing the same thing to conform, even if it's not their first choice).

I had the same realization in 2015 and doubled down.

We have just spent 2.5 years developing automated robotic systems for personalized food preparation, cooking, packaging and retail. Custom hot meals from your smartphone, ready in minutes, actually cooked from fresh ingredients, to personalized orders. Full nutrition breakdown. Model is a wholly owned and operated network, which lets us extract additional efficiencies from a modern logistics network. We simultaneously solve for convenience and choice (plus consistency and availability, with the option to compete effectively on cost if we choose). Series A opens in less than two weeks.

Nice, congrats! Care to share a link to your company?

http://8-food.com/

As a Project Manager working within Food Industry, i think it is A HUGE POTENTIAL market untapped.

However, food business operate on extremely thin margin, and a potential 5x or 10x solution requires huge Capital investment. And before that there are lots of things that aren't automated. Even basic things like ERP aren't any good.

Lab grown meat would be a real game changer I think. I would gladly be as early of an adopter of it as possible - and I very rarely adopt anything early on.

Same here, I would instantly become a "vegan" if this were an option. I really enjoy food (it's a massive part of my culture, family, and childhood) and have been indoctrinated with all the flavors of meat. Although intellectually I feel avoiding unnecessary suffering of animals is a good thing it is very difficult to divorce myself from consuming meat for all the previous reasons.

Lab grown meat would leave me no real excuse to support the animal farming industry because I would be able to keep everything I love about it and get rid of the stuff I don't. I could have my meat and eat it too.

Edit: This sounded more phallic than intended, going to leave it in though haha.

Same here. This is one of the major opportunities to slow the effects of climate change.

Some crystal balling: A lot of these alt-proteins are going to encounter distribution issues.

Why? People aren't going to just go out and say "hey, give me some tofurkey, I watched a PETA documentary last night" and becoming hooked regular alt-protein consumers.

Also, given that in many other parts of the world (South America, Africa, India, China, Middle East) people just eat vegetables and don't need to pretend it's meat to enjoy them - lentils, chickpeas, soybeans/tofu, nuts, seeds, etc. - in terms of health, production cost, familiarity, appearance and overall consumer acceptance, alt-protein faces an uphill battle outside of the new, growing, and high margin western meat replacement market ... but that market is capped, and the real profits for this industry lie in mass consumer acceptance, which will basically be defined by solid inroads in to megacities (most of which are in Asia). These markets could be exceptionally hard to win.

Hopefully they will be careful not to accidentally make the obesity or cancer epidemics worse in a push to rid us of the problems of global warming sometime farther down the road.

Spoiler alert: They won't be.

I hope this doesn't go anywhere, to be honest. People need more human connection, not less, and the rituals of preparing food, eating together, cleaning etc are one of THE fundamental things that makes us human.

Replacing fast food with healthy food is good, but we should all be trying to cook more, and be with our loved ones (or hell, even roommates) _more_, not less.

I hate to be that guy, but did you read the article? It had nothing to do with the rituals of meals and was about lab-grown animal products

An alternative point of view would be that lab-grown 'animal' products and factory-farmed animal products alike are dehumanising, and that people should kill & butcher their own meat.

I'm a huntsman, and I can report that I feel most like I'm being true to my natural self when I'm stalking birds across a prairie. It's a communal effort: my friends are arrayed in a line to either side of me, and often we have a dog or two running back and forth before us. Each of us helps & supports the others, driving through the field, helping cross fencelines, contributing thoughts on how best to approach a particular stretch of land. And yet it's also intensely individualistic: you walk forward, gun in hand, eye halfway to the horizon & ears tuned to a few yards ahead, ready for the rustle which indicates there's a bird in the brush.

You think — or at least I think — that this must be how our primitive ancestors felt: together, and yet apart, each doing his own best and each supporting the others in the common cause of getting something to eat.

Compared to that, buying a piece of meat or a piece of pseudo-meat in the supermarket is nothing.

I disagree that people need more human connection, and preparing food, eating and cleaning in a social context are certainly not fundamental to being human.

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