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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

Will people forever speculate that they have real meat in them?

Vegans will be concerned about shared grill space, I know that was a big issue for friends for mine with Burger King's Impossible implentation

Some vegans. If you care about the environment at all you’re not going to be demanding every restaurant buy additional grills, expand footprint, or alternatively not serve vegans at all. Demanding separate grills doesn’t have any impact on animal suffering either. The only vegans I could see caring about that are the purity test vegans or the vegans who are convinced meat is physically dangerous to human health, and those people shouldn’t eat in McDonald’s regardless.

I have also heard that some people that are on strict vegan diets can develop an intolerance to animal products. So I guess it's possible they could have issues with cross contamination.

Disclaimer: This is pure, third-hand speculation. I am not in a position to know if developing an animal products intolerance is possible.

I can confirm having developed some intolerance to animal fats since becoming vegetarian. It isn't usually a problem if my fake-meat is cooked on the same surface as real-meat, but every so often I will experience some stomach discomfort. Pig fat seems to be the most likely to cause it.

The "pure" vegans may be a minority, but will have a disproportionately loud voice.

Sure but I don't think they'll be exactly in McDonalds target audience here. Their dietary habits are on the polar opposite end.

This used to be a concern for me earlier on in my vegan years but I soon realized that veganism isn't about eating a "pure" diet, it's about the animals. The best thing for the animals is for these products to sell and I shouldn't let a little cross contamination deter me from that.

Yep, I call myself a "mostly plants" person because of this. When buying and cooking for myself I avoid meat and animal products but I felt like it was wrong to waste food just because it was meat.

As an ethical vegan (reduce animal suffering but previously enjoyed eating meat) I don't care if it shares the same grill or goes into the same fryer. But I'm also unlikely to go somewhere where that'd happen - it's more likely if I'm pressed for options i.e. somewhere out of the city.

I'd give the McDonalds burger a go though - it's always interesting to see how far food tech can be pushed and how different it is from the real-deal. The key in my mind is synthetic collagen to give fake meat the bounce/snap/chew of real meat (FWIW I don't eat fake meat often, just interested in food tech in general).

As a Vegan, that can be a concern.

The best way for companies to alleviate that concern is to make your Vegan products clearly different from the meat ones.

McDonalds offers "Veggie Dippers" in the UK, and as they have a vegetable texture, they are easy to tell apart from other products:

https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/product/veggie-dippers-4-...

I think that this particular product is aimed at Vegans/Vegetarians, while products like the Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger are aimed at "flexitarians".

So, when making a "meaty" product, the simplest thing to do is make it a different shape than your other products.

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