Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

Yeah, I'm not a vegetarian, but I've ordered black-bean burgers and the like from restaurants, just because it's different.

And it is. I think these things work better when they aren't trying to be meat.

I disagree. I much prefer a Beyond pattie to more traditional veggie options.

It is quite literally a matter of taste though, so you aren't wrong, but your perspective is just your own.

>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus.

This upsets me because as a vegetarian the last thing I want is to be reminded of what meat tastes like. Who exactly is this for? Because the last I heard it was being marketed primarily at meat eaters.

Veggie burgers can be quite delicious with all the traditional burger toppings, and I'm a pretty big traditional burger fan. The beyond ones always taste kind of dry to me.

But what does your spouse think? I'm an omnivore and agree with you. But if I went a year without eating a real burger I'm sure I'd prefer a Beyond Meat burger over the nice black bean burger I'd currently prefer.

I can't understand why some entrepreneur saw vegetarian food existing, and decided to make a startup about ultraprocessed vegetarian food. It's as if they thought ideology was more important than health or environmental benefits.

The thing is BM (and others) aren't trying to create vega/vegetarian meat. They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way, so it has to taste more like beef/pork than chickpeas or tofu if they want to get the main market.

They are still not there.

I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia/novelty in going to a fast food joint.

But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger or a garden burger. Those taste light and yummy and don’t leave a weird feeling in my stomach.

But I don’t want a veggie patty. I want a hamburger that doesn’t involve killing animals. Beyond/Impossible is close enough.

I much prefer a good black bean patty to a Beyond/Incredible patty. They smell like cat food and never sit right in my stomach.

>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."

Veggie burgers are in a weird position because it's hit or miss on whether they are made with eggs. So it alienates vegans. I don't even bother checking at restaurants if the veggie burgers are vegan anymore. But with Beyond and Impossible, the name recognition is there. Vegetarians and vegans alike know they can eat it. It alienates fewer people. That said, I want as many choices as possible when I go out to eat, so being able to choose a (vegan) veggie burger would be great.

"Vegetables " are not cheaper than meat. Grains are cheaper than meat. Most vegetables are very expensive per calorie compared to meat.

Chickens in particular are very efficient at turning feed corn into usable protein. 3000 calories of fully cooked chicken costs $5 at costco.

FWIW, to each their own, but I have the complete opposite experience and opinion:

1. First off, the vast majority of restaurants that I've been to that offer Impossible or Beyond Burgers still offer at least one traditional veggie burger. In fact I don't know if I've ever seen a restaurant that will only offer a faux meat burger but not offer a veggie burger.

2. I love a good Impossible Burger, fundamentally because it satisfies my cravings for meat in a way veggie burgers never do. Faux meat burgers have very similar protein/fat/carb ratios to real meat, while veggie burgers are nearly always a ton of carbs. I can eat an Impossible Burger and feel full for hours. I eat a veggie burger and I'm hungry again really quickly.

I'm with you and a lot of people apparently. I became a vegetarian a few decades ago. I'm of the opinion that there are plenty of vegetarian dishes that feature the vegetables, and I don't seek out dishes that are vegetables pretending to be meat. Probably the most well-known example is ToFurkey. I mean, I've had it, it's OK, but it's a salty processed food product. Just give me something featuring vegetables, no faux meat.

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.

Isn’t that what BM wants to do though?

I think that’s what they’re going for, not so much satisfy vegans as much as sell their product to non vegans, or everyone.

Your first point is spot on. I’ve had many many delicious black bean burgers.

You see this all the time with “keto” junk foods. Keto brownies were definitely the worst.

Point being, we waste a lot of resources trying to ape “unhealthy” food and do a disservice all around.

> aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus

I've found a similar trend in the supermarket frozen aisles. I used to be able to reliably find "veggie crumbles" at most largeish stores, perfect for pizza, chili, or mapo tofu. My favorite brand was Quorn (not quite vegan, includes egg whites) but there were often several decent options. Now it's rare to find anything other than Beyond or Impossible, packaged to look and feel like ground meat, very fussy. They taste okay, but I prefer both the crumbles' flavors and form factors. I've gone back to using TVP. (I'm not vegetarian -- I'll happily brown my TVP in bacon grease.)

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.

I love meat, and the best non-meat burgers I've eaten that I would absolute eat again and again, didn't try to be non-meat. They were just really tasty vegetable burgers.

What's your favorite veggie burger patty recipe?

I'm not a vegan but a 5-day vegetarian and I've been enjoying all plant-based meat brands over the last few years.

One problem I find with a lot of their products is that their marketing seems off - it is often hard for me to locate plant based nuggets or tenders or patties or just anything. They often say "Chickn", "Pork" or beef in large font with graphics but only write "plant-based" in small text at a location on the packaging which you really have to pay attention to notice. It's not hence, easy to distinguish these things from actual meat by simply glancing at the packaging through the glass.

I don't know whether they want people looking for actual chicken to buy these and give up on returning them later, or whether they're reluctant to highlight the plant-based part of the label as they're often in a small corner in a store.

As a rule, the animals from which meat is derived do not eat vegetables.

  (...) livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans [1]

In particular, much of meat consumed by us is that of ruminants, which depend on eating foods which must be fermented internally to be assimilated, such as grass.

  The global livestock sector ingested an estimated 6.0 billion tonnes of feed (DM) in 2010. The three major feed materials were grass and leaves (46% or 2.7 million tonnes, Fig. 2 and Table SI 2 in Supplementary Information), followed by crop residues such as straws, stover or sugar-cane tops (19% or 1.1 billion tonnes DM). At global level, human-edible feed materials represented about 14% of the global livestock feed ration. [1]

[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2017.01.001

I think its important to note that animals don't get fed human quality vegetables.

They get the cheapest possible bits that can't be sold for more to humans but are still enjoyed by animals.

Animals tend to eat human waste products which is a form of recycling, turning essentially rubbish into bioavailable protein

I always liked how Gardenburgers taste. They're not trying to be meat, and that was ok.

Completely agree, I hate it when products attempt simulate meat. There are so many delicious vegetarian recipes! I could eat Indian food everyday for the rest of my life.

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.

You are not the target group for these products!

The whole point of these products is to replace meat for habitual meat eaters. If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. That's the value. That's the target.

This is about replacing the meat in gas station hot dogs and fast food burgers and food court lunches, and if these alternatives can be made good enough and cheap enough, we can reduce the total meat consumption in society to a fraction of what it is today, without having to ideologically convert people to vegetarianism.

These products are for all the people who don't think vegetarian products are incredible, but actually don't care whether or not their burger is made of cow or plants, as long as it tastes the same. But the traditional veggie burgers that you prefer don't cut it, so these products are a step further on the way to a product that will. They're not there yet, though.

I have had exactly one good veggie patty at a restaurant. The recurring problem is a complete lack of structure so that 90% of the patty squishes out the sides when you try to take a bite. And the restaurant with the good one closed last year, so I might never have a good veggie patty again.

Veggie patties mostly taste fine, but the entire point of a sandwich is that I can pick it up with my hands and take a bite out of it. If the patty can’t stay on the sandwich, it’s not a good sandwich. Just put it on a plate and call it a veggie loaf or something that I can eat with a fork.

Even the older products you get at the grocery store from Boca and Morningstar Farms could be structurally acceptable, but whenever a restaurant tries to make a veggie patty I swear they’re just sticking some vegetables in a blender, putting it in a round shape, and hoping it stays that way. I’ve eaten soups with more structure.

> One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus

I'm not vegan, but I've grown to always take the veggie burgers, unless they're beyond meat or black beans-based. They tend to be better than that dry-tasting overcooked patty (in my opinion). Makes me sad when they replace their veggie options with beyond meat

Ten years ago, I found that the good-tasting veggie burgers invariably consisted of mostly carbs. The rare high-protein soy burger wasn’t very pleasant.

Most restaurants have plenty of tasty ways to deliver vegetarian carbs, but protein is harder to find. The Beyond and Impossible burgers aren’t perfect, but they do allow me to meet my macronutrient needs while satisfying a burger craving. Old-school veggie burgers don’t do the job.

My wife is a vegetarian, we have the same complaints about restaurants.

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.

Sure, you are married to a vegan and learned to appreciate the taste. In the same way, I enjoy a level of Indian spices that would make an average American's eyes bulge out. But for habitual meat eaters there is nothing that really replaces the texture, the feeling of substantial satiety, reality of not being hungry again for 8 hours... To each their own?

> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.

We have herds of goats eating dry brush to prevent wildfires around here. I don't suppose you would enjoy THAT vegan dish? :-)

Agreed, I haven't had meat in a few years now but the key to cooking vegan and vegetarian is to let it be its own thing and not try to make it taste like some specific 'meat' flavor.

Unless the cook has a flame grill or knows their business very well I also find beyond/impossible 'meat' to taste worse than a decently prepared seitan or bean based patty.

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.

This is something I always have to highlight to folks. In Australia, personally speaking, the best veggie burger is call the 'Not burger'. It doesn't taste like Meat, it just tastes good! There is a reason why they haven't changed it in almost 20 years I have known about it.

> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach. When I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat.

for taste yes, for vegan and vegetarians it depends. that audience is so heavily diluted by a dozen different goals they want to represent or embody.

some don't like the inflammation (according to their sources) that a meat diet causes within humans, in which case this wouldn't satisfy them

some don't like harm to animals, in which case this would satisfy them

some don't like the environment impact, in which case, who knows? sustainability study and audits needed

others...?

Totally agree; my wife and I have 100% stopped burger places now, since most of them have replaced veggie patties with impossible/beyond meat.

I actually dont like meat because of the texture. If you give me meat which tastes like beans, I will eat it

Fake meat is a replacement for meat, not for existing vegetarian food.

It is a common misconception that vegetarians want food that looks and taste like meat, but is vegetarian or vegan. Most vegetarians already know what to eat. Fake meat is for the carnivores who don't want to go cold turkey and have no idea what to eat otherwise.

> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.

Actually, as far as I recall, a counter argument to this, is that fresh vegetables are more expensive since their shelf lives are a lot shorter. I can buy most types of meats (chicken, beef, etc.), freeze them for weeks and the taste would still be great, while fresh vegetables will normally only last for a few days.

Of course you can go for frozen vegetables, but this is only limited to some vegetables, and in my opinion, don't taste as good as fresh vegetables.

This.

I've been asking myself ever since this beyond/incredible/whatever fad got started: Why spend all the time and energy trying to make something taste like beef that isn't beef? Why not spend that same time and energy creating a new, appealing of its own (and then market that)?

I don't like beans, peas and lentils. I do however love plant-based meat. There is a market for people like me but I don't know if it justifies the valuation of these companies.

Maybe they shouldn't just imitate meat. Go beyond or extend the traditional meat, meaning make it more tasteful with better texture. Create new flavors, play with chewiness etc.

Moreover, I dont think vegetables even need to replace meat in position — vegetables allow for other forms of food formats.. so utilize it. Every time I go to vegan restaurants I get the feeling they don’t actually like vegetables; everything is vegetable-replacements for meat-based dishes. And the tofu crafting is just baffling, with the whole chickin and bacin and whatnot

In the UK that's rarely the case. The veg options are usually the same price as the meat. In some places.

At Gourmet Burger Kitchen the Beyond Meat cheeseburger costs 30% more than its beef counterpart.

https://gbk.co.uk/menu

Clearly just one example but it's rare the veg option's cheaper.

The other very annoying trend is to remove the vegetarian option and only have a vegan one. My wife is a vegetarian and obviously the food can be far better if you can have butter, milk, cheese, and eggs, but they often insist on only having either meat options or vegan options

Exactly, these things are all analogous to eatint something called 'meat pie' to me - Well ok but what is it?

I make vegetarian burgers sometimes, either something grilled(broiled)/griddled stacked up like halloumi & aubergine, or a patty of shredded jackfruit or something. Why would I want to eat nondescript 'vegetarian patty'?

It's not just burgers, 'vegetarian lasagne' etc. is (aside from not being good appealing marketing) a reliable negative signal for a menu.

I'm not a vegetarian and I eat meat almost daily.

This resonates though. A lot of restaurants have vegetarian dishes prepared to taste sort of like meat (e.g. paneer tikka instead of chicken tikka etc.). It was telling that the reverse was never there. I never liked the trend but understood it since the vegetarians would like to enjoy the taste of the other food and this was a compromise. This seems to be next step in that evolution but from what I've read, the stuff is highly processed and has a ton of chemicals added for flavour, stability etc. There are several vegetarian dishes that I enjoy for the vegetarian taste and the last thing I want is for them to pushed aside for these highly processed products that try to approximate meat.

Interesting you should mention that. I used to really like the spicy beanburger at McDonald's. There was no reason to make something that pretended to be meat with even more additives, except to drive the marketing of the non-meat meat industry. I'm happy to eat rice and beans, I don't need no pretend meat. Although I do eat meat about half the time.

Interesting I'm reading Michel Pollan's book the Omnivore's Dilemma, about large scale agriculture, it's quite worrying, although I don't feel the UK is quite at the stage of the US yet. I see quite a lot of animals roaming and diversity when I'm out walking, but it's definitely going in that direction.

Exactly. Even if I was a vegan I would not touch heavily processed food like beyond meat. The distinction between processed vs non-processed is much more important to me than the vegan vs non-vegan.

I tried being a vegan for several months. I developed all sorts of aches and pains. As an experiment, I ate a steak. It was the best tasting thing I ever ate. I even licked the plate. I felt great the next day.

What can I say? My body needs meat.

I'm not vegan or vegetarian however some of those veggie burgers were great because they didn't try and fake it as meat.

This was an ideological value prop, not one based off customer pain points.

Good post

I think what companies who want to cater to vegetarians and vegans should do is focus more on providing plant based foods that AREN'T pretending to be meat. I'm not a vegan, never have been, but I quite like a lot of vegetarian foods. But I tried a beyond burger once just out of curiosity and it just... smelled wrong. There was something about it that put me off immediately on a primal level. My guess is that sales surged initially as curious non-vegans tried the fake meat, only for most to realize that it wasn't nearly as tasty and go back to actual meat, leaving the main customer base as vegans trying their best to convince themselves that no it tastes good actually. Providing options such as grilled vegetables that are actually super tasty is a way better idea than just trying to mold weird processed plant matter into a vague approximation of "meat".

> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach.

It's a better approach if it's economically viable. And there are doubts it ever will be, see e.g. https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...

For a vegetarian burger option, nothing beats a potato patty burger done to perfection. It's incredibly simple, essentially just mashed potatoes formed into a patty, breaded and fried. It can be seasoned to your liking with herbs, garlic, salt, etc. and the traditional burger toppings nicely compliment it. You can somewhat emulate it by replacing a burger patty with the fries that often come with an order but it's not the same as a purpose made one.

I'm not a vegetarian. I recently bought packaged sliced baloney for a sandwich, as well as sliced sharp cheddar. The baloney I accidentally bought was fake baloney. (No meat.) I didn't notice until I was making my sandwich. It tasted absolutely disgusting, like chemicals. I am not a picky eater and I think it is the only disgusting food item I've ever bought in a grocery store. As I tried to finish eating it, I kept thinking, how can my grocery store sell something that tastes so disgusting? I mean aren't there taste tests during product development? My sandwich literally tastes better without it. And not just because of the cheddar - I nearly bought hummus and it also would have tasted great. Hell, a single leaf of lettuce would taste better in my sandwich than that. It was horrible.

The thing is, I think the only criteria it was judged by is that it has to look completely like baloney. It did, it had me fooled. But tasted disgusting.

> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.

This is literally the whole point of the Food Chain and why species counts generally decrease as you go up the chain. Plants make up the vast majority of biomass on the planet. Animals that eat plants make up the next largest chunk. Animals that eat those animals make up the next largest. Etc.

I eat meat, but it's undeniable that vegetation is far more economic than meat on sheer scale.

As a vegetarian since childhood in the 80s it’s incredibly sad to have seen all the progress made in both shops and restaurants thrown away. Even before meat alternatives, menus were getting blander with a focus on dairy-free options (to be clear, vegan food can and should be extremely tasty, decadent even, but it’s also the dumping ground for healthy options in most menus). That the main options are now explicitly meat flavoured is adding insult to injury.

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.

I'm not a vegan nor a vegetarian. I just sometimes think I eat too much meat and check out vegetarian restaurants. They all have 100 kinds of fake burgers and little else.

There are thousands of good food recipes without meat. Why are you trying to sell me burgers?

It doesn't even have to look like a burger patty. The best burger I've ever had was a portobello burger with blue cheese. Just the head of the portobello, blue cheese melted over it, in a bun with all the works.

> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat

One of the reasons that the vegetian options are more expensive is because the margins are higher. People compare supermarkets based on meat prices, so they accept lower margins on meat to attract more customers.

Another thing is that people don't typically buy brand name meat, which allows supermarkets to more aggressively negotiate on price.

At least this is how it is in the Netherlands (according to a newspaper article I can't find right now).

Meat is a lot more nutrient dense. You would have to eat 4x the veggies to get the same nutrition. Better to let the farm animals concentrate that energy for us. They also eat a lot of grass, which is great for carbon capture. So just eat a balanced meal and be done with it.

Beyond the taste, most Beyond Meat meals also tend to contain more calories than the meat-based equivalent. I am better off to eat an occasional burger when I fancy it, and go for more healthy vegetarian dishes on other days.

That's also my experience. Not a vegan but (before covid and wfh) I used to like eating 1-2 times a week in certain vegan restaurants because the food was good and very well prepared and seasoned. The stuff that tries to imitate meat however is nasty at best. Not only it tastes horrible but what's the point of choosing a supposedly healthier diet if you eat that industrial sludge?

I eat and like to eat meat, lots of it, as well as other foods. I am completely stumped by this push for hyper-processed "substitutes". I regularly ordered vegetarian dishes, and often enjoyed a decent bean or beet based burger. Those things can be delicious. I can only hope this fad of beyond meat bull-crap goes bankrupt and dies, sooner rather than later.

> One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. . . The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.

”Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”

> I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day

The reason you don’t see the value prop of beyond burgers is that you’re eating the real thing regularly. As a pescitarian who loves meat, I would bet the farm that if you went vegetarian, you would think Beyond is a godsend.

> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach.

Similar to how nuclear fusion is better than fission, and self-driving cars are preferable to human-controlled, etc etc.

I am a vegetarian who loves Black bean burgers. Apparently I can't find good ones in India. It used to be a staple one for me back in US.

I’ve been vegan for many years now, and I hate those bean burgers, to the point that I’d rather have nothing than them. I love impossible meat and have no problems with it. I eat it almost every day for years now. I’m almost 40 now and my blood work is better than when I was 30.

It’s funny to hear how a person who eats meat thinks that I should be satisfied with a sausage made out of a carrot. I eat enough of veggies in their original form, but they do not make a great burger or sausages. I also really don’t think that meat alternatives are pushing out anything – it’s the consumers that prefer them. I know I am.

I would like to clarify that for me eating healthy was not the reason I became vegan. We need to stop the torture and extermination of sentient beings for the sake of pleasing our tastebuds.

I see alot of Vegans / vegetarians responding in support but let me say as a carnivore that will never go Vegan / vegetarian I agree 100%,

I have eaten vegan dishes that were excellent, I am not opposed to them at all. One of the best Tikka Masla's I have ever had was vegan. However I can not stand when they attempt to make be believe X is Y meat, no, it is not and no amount of marketing will get me to believe they taste the same. They do not.

Just like Cauliflower Mash does not taste like potatoes, it tastes like puréed Cauliflower...

Honestly, the best approach is not making “fake” anything—black bean burgers and other home-made options not only taste way better, but they are not highly processed.

The more stages in processing a food undergoes, the worse it is for people. It’s really that simple.

People are trying to over-science food in my opinion. Sticking to good, wholesome ingredients is the way to go. Support local farmers not some large conglomerate factory.

Here’s a good recipe for example:

https://minimalistbaker.com/smoky-bbq-black-bean-burger/

>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus.

The homogenization of veggie burgers into one particular type of patty is the reason I don't even try Burger places anymore. It used to be that if you had 5 Burger places near you, you'd get 5 very different veggie burgers (e.g. black bean, quinoa, mixed veggies, all with a different mix of spices). Now you basically get the same veggie burger at every place, just with different dressings/sauces.

I suspect it's better in big cities (e.g. NYC) where there's enough of a customer base for a veggie patty and a engineered meat patty on the menu. But in other places, I think the customers numbers are just too small. So I understand the logic from a business perspective, but for some customers it just sucks to have lost the veggie patty.

Thank you for sharing your personal anecdotes and opinions. However true they may be, I'm kinda concerned that this sort of post is at the top of a highly commented Hacker News thread.

>A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."

So much, this, I have been vegetarian my whole life and quite honestly the idea of eating something that tastes like meat is almost as unappealing as the idea of eating meat. I get that it helps people give up, but it's not for me.

Been a vegetarian and enjoying veggie burgers for over 30 years now. The Beyond Meat patties taste too much like actual meat - that is, awful. The meat eaters don't like it because it's close, but not quite, like meat. The vegetarians don't like it because it tastes too much like meat and we have other, better tasting, options.

They've kind of hit an uncanny valley of food. As such, I say good riddance!

I’m an omnivore, but I enjoyed a garden burger or two in my college cafeteria… they were fine once I stopped pretending they were hamburgers.

I've been vegetarian for 40years and prefer my food to not be like meat. I also know plenty of people that avoid if too like real meat. Not sure what market they go for. People that dont want meat but miss it I guess. The idea of the latest lab grown meat I also find disturbing

Exact opposite. I ask them to please not bring me a mashed vegetables patty and call it a burger. It is not.

The idea of a lettuce tomato onion burger stack on a bun is that there's a taste and texture contrast between the stack of vegetables and something that's not another stack of vegetables but mashed. (Doesn't mean it has to be Beyond or Impossible, see last para.)

I suspect displacement happened because folks paying $25 for a "burger" when out are less interested in the garden mash, want something a little edgier. FWIW, before Beyond and Impossible, at any restaurant or diner where I took time to explain the difference in alt-burger types, they were willing to try ones I mention below, and they reported customers preferred it. In many, someone had just told them "have a vegetarian burger" and they just got the mashed veggies patty or mashed beans cake since that's what most products are. Not being vegetarian themselves, they weren't aware of other availability. By contrast, Impossible and Beyond essentially went door to door "educating" them, so they switched.

While Impossible and Beyond displaced the meat alternatives, that doesn't mean you have to go meat in a vat at home, you can do products such as Morningstar Farms Grillers Original, or maybe Boca All-American Flame-Grilled Burger. Those taste stack more reasonably with what goes on a burger than the mashed vegetables patties, without the weirdness (fake blood look, why?) of Impossible or Beyond. Your local diner will probably be happy to stock them as they're simple frozen goods.

My conclusion is that we are not the target audience for fake burgers, because we are not missing what it's presumably giving some people. I'm pretty sure these patties are meant to assuage meat cravings in psychologically-obligate carnivores. Because otherwise, you're right. Almost all meat substitute dishes are missing the point; just cook vegetarian cuisine from the start. There are all manners of unhealthy deep fried deliciousness with plants, that don't involve heavily processing the plants to look and vaguely taste meaty first. And most of them, frankly, taste better than fake meat. But if you're in burger withdrawal, no onion rings or curry will help. Only meat, or perhaps, fake-meat, will sate that desire.

Same. I ate plenty of vegetarian or vegan stuff that's just tasty food.

I'm already picky for burger meat, I'd rather have plain sandwich than burger with mediocre meat, and at best those emulate that, mediocre burger meat, at cost of way more processing.

> It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables!

Not exactly. In pastoral agriculture, animals eat grasses that humans cannot, on land that is not easily farmable (infertile, rocky, hilly, etc). A nice side effect of this is that the animals make the land more farmable by fertilizing it with their poops.

I really don't understand why people want to simulate the taste of meat. It seems like a completely uninteresting problem to solve, plant foods are already perfectly fine.

The availability of "perfect substitutes" for meat wouldn't affect my food choices at all and this is likely true for a lot of people.

Animals eat really cheaply compared to the produce humans eat. The real reason meat is more expensive than vegetables is simple supply and demand.

> "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."

I'm a meat lover and this annoys me too! One of my favorite sandwiches is a southwestern style black bean burger.

I also flat out hate Impossible Burgers, they taste off, their texture is weird, and they leave me feeling icky after I eat one.

The animals eat the vegetables because they evolved to eat the vegetables.

Humans did not.

What do you see as the benefit of reducing red meat to once a month?

There was a widely-publicized article recently questioning some "well-established" science that had, previously for decades, linked red meat to higher rates of heart disease, etc.

What is “burger sauce”?

> sodium content is as bad or worse than just plain regular beef

Hasn't the dietary sodium thing been found to be a non-issue, except for a few individuals with high blood pressure?

https://www.cochrane.org/CD004022/HTN_effect-low-salt-diet-b...

> What _did_ eventually get me to stop making Beyond Burgers is that the fat and sodium content is as bad or worse than just plain regular beef

Exactly. As a vegetarian, I do choose a Beyond burger when I go to a burger restaurant, but I never buy it to make at home. There are healthier alternatives that are also delicious.

> FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger that's easy to prepare that is close in texture to a real burger - if you use a burger sauce and cheese like most recipes for non-vegans do, it tastes pretty close. I even liked it so much I'd order it at restaurants wherever available and bought a few shares since I figured they'd do well.

You are the target demographic; you're looking for a vegetarian or vegan meat analog so you can continue your existing eating habits and the meals you're familiar with, instead of the more difficult task of changing your lifestyle and diet.

That said, chips are vegan.

1000% this!

IMHO, Health / Nutrition is very K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid), but it feels like so many people get caught in the trap of finding "one weird trick" to keep them lean / healthy and then setting common sense on fire - so long as they obey that rule.

> Vegans are healthier and leaner than Omnivores. Therefore I can eat pastries for breakfast lunch and dinner, and as long as they don't contain animal products I'll lose weight!

> FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger...

I tried two burgers 1-2 years ago: when I opened the package I smelled alcohol, the same while frying them in the pan and while eating them (I cooked them "medium/well done" without cheese nor anything else as I was curious and just wanted to try this stuff out) => is this normal?

Asking because I never read anywhere anything that mentioned this... . (btw. I'm in Switzerland, so maaaybe here the product is "different" to comply with the country's regulations..., just a wild guess).

In the end I didn't like it because of that smell (I'm in general ok with alcohol, I'm drinking a beer right now), the texture and taste was acceptable/good.

The irony is that there is no reason these plant based alternatives should be priced higher than meat. The raw ingredients are dirt cheap.

You can get pound of TVP or soy protein is like $3-4; and certainly less at wholesale prices. It comes dehydrated, so back of the napkin I'd guess the cost for a company producing fake meat products is like $1/lb or less.

I paid $8.50 at a gas station for 2.47 oz of "Noble Jerky." Ingredients: soy protein, sugar, black bean paste, spices.

I imagine the profit margins for these products approaches that of soft drinks.

I find the Beyond product has a strange artificial odor to it. Like it's trying to recreate the smell of fully cooked meat product, but before it's even cooked. It's odd in the way that artificial smoke can be weird. I bought a package of Beyond patties at Costco (I think it was like 20) and had a hard time getting through them after the first 4-5. The Impossible equivalent tended to just make my kitchen smell like a decent meal instead of some kind of weird laboratory experiment.

The problem with both of them is I can get a sack of burgers from Costco, like 50 of them, for less than I'd pay for 20 of the fake ones. and they'll taste and smell the right way and be usable in more recipes.

I don’t know that $114 over a year would be an amount I would notice/ make me buy a lesser product.

I’ve no issue with removing the subsidy but I’m not sure that changes much either.

That US subsidy, $114 per person, if removed and offset by higher prices at the supermarket, would amount to under $10 more a month per person in grocery costs. I can see there being a reduction of consumption at the scale of the industry in the US, but generally speaking I don't think the industry would notice it all that much. The subsidies are almost certainly not the reason that meat is cheaper than beyond burgers.

> While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience.

Interesting. I've always felt the opposite: Impossible closer to beef, Beyond much tastier.

But I haven't eaten a real burger in a couple decades.

> (the US spends $38 billion in subsidies - about $114 per person)

I think that number is basically made up. It comes from a chain of references by activists and lobbyists (against meat and dairy subsidies) who are basically playing a game of broken telephone with statistics.

AIER cites a Columbia SIPA article, which cites the book Meatonomics. Meatonomics is written by a lawyer who advocates against meat and dairy and seems to have synthesized the number by adding numbers from several sources. He cites an article by an anti-meat/dairy law firm which estimates dairy subsidies at $19 billion. (Meatononics includes dairy subsidies in the $38 billion figure.)

But those dairy subsidies aren't from payments to dairy farmers. They're looking at indirect subsidies, the largest of which is food stamps and other nutritional assistance programs. They estimate that Americans spend about 11% of their food budget on dairy products and based on that they estimate the amount of food stamp money that goes to dairy farmers.

tl;dr: The number is a rough estimate based largely on the government giving poor people food stamps and people choosing to spend some of that on meat and dairy. The numbers are also from advocacy groups, not peer reviewed journals.

Completely agree with you. I'm not a vegetarian at all and honestly most of my dinners are vegetarian anyway because half the time I'm just too lazy to deal with meat. Plenty of delicious cheese centered meals, for instance. Mac and cheese can be made in a million different ways. Sometimes I'll make my chicken rice and mushroom casserole but throw in legumes instead. Lots of great things to make with eggs for protein too.

I've accidentally cut my meat consumption down drastically through sheer laziness, so I always find it puzzling that people make a fuzz about it.

I was wondering this the other day when eating a saag paneer curry instead of my normal meat-based order: why would anyone go through the motions to have fake chicken when you have multitudes of vegetarian options which can be treated similarly to how we treat meat in cooking. Paneer is not 'trying to be chicken', but it can be put in a curry or fried, so can serve a similar purpose -- but is distinctly delicious in its own right!

Food is highly cultural and habitual. Changing their diet can take years for some people. Also, many people probably never have tried many truly vegetarian dishes, so there is a learning curve.

> One thing I'm seeing all the time is people approaching vegetarian food by removing the meat and adding something else instead.

As somebody who does not really eat meat but is very concerned about protein targets, this isn't quite so simple. Various meats (chicken, some fish) can be extremely cheap extremely high protein foods. When you don't have these to work with you need to think a lot more about your options.

I often "replace" a meat protein option with seitan, tofu, or tempeh just to hit my goals. These things aren't engineered in a lab the same way that Beyond etc have been, but they are processed/made and fill the "chunk of protein" requirement in a way that whole plants struggle with.

If you don't toss in a "chunk of protein," you need to be incredibly careful working in proteins. Anything with a low protein/calorie ratio becomes difficult to work in. Cheap staples like pasta and rice are even questionable because their protein ratios are relatively low, and then you find yourself eating only beans...

This is easier for vegetarians who eat cheese and eggs, of course. Nutritionally these things act more like meat and you can use them as such.

I think you are on the money. Despite the article's headline (and anecdotes) implying a broader downturn in the sector, I'm inclined to write this off to Beyond expectations being completely out of touch with reality, and possibly some mismanagement / marketing problems specific to Beyond.

This statement from Impossible (which is included in the article) directly contradicts the "plant based meats are failing" subtext the article seems to want to push otherwise:

> “We’re not experiencing anything like what Beyond Meat has reported or some of the other brands in the space,” Keely Sulprizio, a spokeswoman for Impossible Foods, said in an email. “Quite the opposite: We’re seeing hypergrowth, with over 60 percent year-over-year dollar sales growth in retail alone.”

> The IRI data show that while volume sales of Impossible ground meat and faux burger patties were down slightly, volumes of other categories, including frozen faux meat and chicken, soared.

Spot on.

Safety also matters, US meat industry is really strictly controlled and paradoxically it's safer to eat meat than veggies, especially fresh like a salad. It'd be tough to solve, this. No one would vote to remove meat controls but comparable controls over pesticide/soil/cleanness would be unpopular too as they'd increase prices and make veg tougher to sell.

This is a really great perspective. Thank you for sharing!

Regarding this part:

> It took an unbelievable combination of luck and grit for one woman to introduce America to French cuisine, allowing home cooks to stretch past the bland, canned staples of the 1960's.

I feel like this should be obvious but I'm ashamed to know I don't know who you're describing. Can you or somebody else happening to read this please elaborate?

Why though? Animals can be farmed cheaply, so what’s the problem?

From a French perspective, American cuisine is bland and unimpressive.

Clamping down on meat is not enough, you need to also get around cooking everything in oil, and added sugar (basically, everything about your cuisine).

> The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful.

I disagree with the last part on a philosophical level. Society should push forward, and that doesn't mean we need to take convenient things and make them less convenient, so that alternatives seem more attractive in comparison. We need to make the alternatives better in-and-of themselves, otherwise there will be more pushback from people who currently only use cars, as opposed to a more positive "oh, we can use our car for X and then use this other thing for Y because it offers Z advantage vs the car"

> Make it vegetarian and I have even more

I mean... pizza.

Vegans are and were as happy as vegetarians to eat non-processed vegetables patties. I could push this point further by stating that a high percentage of vegans are turned off by the meatiness of those fake meat products. Those who pushed or asked for the product are companies and clients with an environmentalist motivation. It also appears that the product is easier to manage for restaurants which is also a reason why most restaurants are picking this product. The meat-like is really just an industrial product designed to please the largest crowd as possible which also includes vegans. So please, don’t say it’s the vegans that pushed all “real” options off the menu because the situation is much more complex than that.

“Veganism is making being Vegetarian increasingly harder.” This is a bold claim. Those people you met needs to chill because the problem you described is light years of being a “real” problem. Adding or removing ingredients is possible in most restaurants and quite easy: “Please can you substitute the absence of cheese or the vegan cheese for real cheese.”

I've been vegetarian for a couple decades and have no problem with vegans.

I don't think I've ever been to a pizza place that didn't just let me choose a vegetarian pizza with real cheese. I also love Beyond Meat, but most veggieburgers I ate prior to Beyond Meat were vegan too, though few places used cheese or egg. You can make a vegan black bean burger, or a great vegan portobello. Veganism isn't what converted places to Beyond.

> They want a Vegetarian burger, made of a bean patty, mushroom or some other vegetables which is not some form of dystopian processed food.

Speak for yourself. Vegetarians are not a monolith, and I know many that eat beyond/impossible as a staple of their diet.

(Conspiracy hat on) I wonder if Big Meat is deliberately pushing veganism to dissuade vegetarianism similar to how Big Oil pushed for “carbon footprint”.

That, or it had previously been overvalued. The company was very hyped for a while.

Not really, if you look at the last 2 years their revenue has been flat and their cost exploded.

This stock doesn't look discounted at all, they don't make any money and don't have any growth. I haven't checked their strategy to turn this around but just from the financials I'd say the stock is about where it should be.

Is there really a market for that product? I tried their burger patty and couldn't finish. Might be personal taste, but it just didn't work for me.

https://app.finclout.io/t/kRPQyAo

Have you even looked at their costs?! They’re losing so much money and much more than ever before. They’re playing the growth game but they don’t have software margins. It’s trouble.

Be careful with this logic.

Even at this 'discount' their market cap is 2x their revenue, which doesn't sound so bad until you compare it to someone like Tyson foods who has a market cap that is 0.5x their revenue.

Given BYND isn't growing much and its got a bad cost structure, it's still 'expensive,' just less so than before.

Sounds like it was pushed hard and still is.

Why is wet cat food smell revolting to you? It's meat, after all.

Out of curiosity, are you also ok with how raw hamburger looks, because to me personally that's also super gross. I guess everyone is different though.

I agree. I'd also add the fact that much of the world is experiencing a cost of living crisis, and luxury products are often the first to be cut in difficult times.

What about a price to CO2 (with equivalence calculation) emission? This would automatically make the (beef) meat significantly more expensive. And it would essentially just put a price on something which costs a price later anyway.

> when I go to the supermarket these are still too expensive compared to regular meat

I never looked, but if the above is true, then that is the issue. People will always buy cheap. And to many people, if more expensive than 'real' meat, then they will not buy "beyond meat". Why, real meat in people's mind will always equate to higher quality.

Isn't the reduced cost of regular meat due to subsidies? https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/

Burger King uses Impossible. You could be right about the business side, but I point this out because I think Impossible is substantially better than Beyond.

Like I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second (and it's not as explicitly their intention), whereas Impossible is pretty damn convincing in certain contexts.

Also, Impossible started out strongly focused on the restaurant industry, and AFAIK still doesn't even bother with supermarkets. Whereas Beyond started as a supermarket item. Even if I did like Beyond I agree I'd be less inclined to buy these to cook myself.

They are, currently, expensive for sure. This is largely because of lower demand than beef. The longer term plan is that with increased demand they will be significantly less expensive than beef, because they have lower input costs: instead of processing plants through cows, you remove the middle-man-cow.

I don't consider eating meat a problem. Its the Vegans who seem to have a problem with it. Not everyone else. And they are a loud minority.

The "problems" with meat have more to do with how the industry operates than the actual practice of eating meat itself. We are omnivorous. And the health issues with meat are overstated by those with an agenda to force their diet on others.