Hacker News Reader

Comment by unchocked | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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(?).

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

My body certainly doesn't ask for more of them.

They are not healthier in terms of fat/protein/nutrients. They do lack some of the cancerous elements of meat production (nitrates). But the big win is that they are made from plants and cost far less to produce while removing the animal cruelty and greatly reducing the risk for disease spread (because of not using animals). Seeing as we are in the midst of a pandemic caused by meat eating and we’ve had several other smaller pandemics we believe were caused by meat eating that seems like a big win for the future (hiv originated with bushmeat, h1n1, mad cow disease).

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.

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com