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Comment by revscat | Hacker News Reader

Which will likely involve not raising animals for slaughter at all, but rather things like Impossible/Beyond meats.

These have flopped. Most people who like meat want real meat. Most people who don't like meat don't want fake meat. The remainder is the market for fake meats, and it has proven small.

They have not flopped. They are extremely popular among vegetarians.

They flopped as "meat substitutes" because they are not in fact meat substitutes and never were. They are flavored soy protein. They are junk food. Absolutely nothing like lab-grown meat or any other kind of meat, in neither form nor function nor nutritional value.

Saying they’re absolutely nothing like meat in form or nutritional value doesn’t make sense to me - the Whopper and Impossible Whopper are basically the same item. An impossible patty has very similar fat/protein content to a beef (80/20) patty but with more carbohydrates (beef having none).

Impossible patties seem a legitimate meat substitute for those who choose to purchase them.

Counting macronutrients is a pretty poor way of comparing foods. They have different amino acids, fats, trace minerals, and vitamins, and are digested differently in the body. They don't even smell the same or behave the same when cooking.

This isn't some kind of pro-meat screed, either. It's just not true that they are equivalent culinarily or nutritionally. They are a pretty good approximation of beef, but they're not the same.

If the Whoppers seem the same, it's because Whoppers are junk food, and Impossible meat is kind of just vegan junk food.

I wonder what it is that drives the human desire for meat. Meat substitutes seem to be trying to solve the environmental issues by taking advantage of that inbuilt natural desire, albeit imperfectly. I have to wonder if thay is an easier strategy than trying to change people's habits on a mass scale.

> what it is that drives the human desire for meat

My guess is that it's a calorically dense nutritionally complete food (if you like eating organs)

I actually like Impossible Burger. It doesn't take like a burger exactly, but it tastes good. And if you screw up an Impossible burger, it doesn't taste nearly as bad as a screwed up beef burger, which gets as dry as leather.

they flopped because they're expensive. I've tried both. They're both more or less edible. But impossible burgers are more money than just buying beef, and not as good. Why is this pea protein more money than beef?

This is the right answer -- price drives demand, and meat substitutes are currently mis-priced due to meat subsidies (and externalities).

Subsidies and economies of scale.

I really like meat, and I actually like the Impossible Whopper.

I don't think those will really ever make a noticeable dent in the market. Most people don't want plant based burgers, especially with the negative reputation of soy and masculinity. I think lab grown meat will be the future. If you are able to present it in packages that look exactly like the cuts that one can currently buy in the store I see no reason they wont catch on.

> negative reputation of soy and masculinity

That's a ruse/tactic of the meat industry, nothing more. Meat/dairy is full of estrogens, phytoestrogens are in fact protective against real estrogens.

Btw, I don't think that masculinity depends on eating corpses / animal secretions.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/modern-minds/202005/...

And forget phytoestrogens, commercial milk has plain ol estrogen: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19496976/

“Soy boy” never made much sense to me. Most people who fling that epithet could probably improve their health outcomes with some edamame.

Among the phytoestrogens, it seems like hops are exceptionally potent and disruptive to human hormones as well. This is a bit ironic because it’s a common ingredient in beer, another thing sometimes associated with masculinity.

Impossible/beyond apparently have similar CO2 footprints as turkey.

On the other hand, we're in the middle of a turkey shortage due to bird flu.

Various sources put beyond burgers at less than a kg of co2 per kg of food, whereas turkey is close to 20kg of co2 per kg of meat.

The thing with plant based meat is that even with processing, it’s virtually impossible to come close to farmed meat in terms of water, energy, and feed. Since the animals eat the plants their meat is compared to, they will have eaten the equivalent of what they’re being compared to in a very short period of time to begin with. Then you are comparing the processing and delivery carbon which is negligible in the scheme of things.

People (even very intelligent people) often seem to estimate the carbon footprint of plant based diets incorrectly by several orders of magnitude.

See sibling reply.

Where are you getting that from? Other data suggests that even worst case production of plant sources of protein come out far ahead of even the best case production of meat, dairy, etc.

> plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced. > […] > Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.

https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat

See sibling reply. Your reference doesn't include Beyond or Impossible, neither of which audit their carbon footprint.

Attempting to audit externally is difficult, but the study that exists shows they are much, much worse than other vegetarian food.

Source please.

That's precisely the problem. I cannot provide one, and neither can you. Neither of those companies internally audit their CO2 footprints, and their supply chains are opaque:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4355008-beyond-meat-may-be-...

https://www.fooddive.com/news/beyond-meat-lags-conventional-...

This study says Beyond burgers are at 10% the greenhouse emissions of cattle:

https://css.umich.edu/publications/research-publications/bey...

Poultry is at 10%. Chicken is at 20%. (See the first and second bar graphs):

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-bene...

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