Comment by jerojero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerojero | Hacker News Reader

I think this shows us that "technological innovation" solutions are not always the right answer to our problems.

I've had these fake-patties and they're good, I've gone to burger king and it's more than good enough. But then again, when I go to the supermarket these are still too expensive compared to regular meat and the flavor profile is not as good. So I they would have to come up with a really killer product, but how can that happen when adoption is so slow? They are not going to get money to really improve things to the required level to dominate the market.

In this regard, I think anyone who was hoping for plant-based meat to replace meat was being a little naïve. Imo, the solution to phasing out meats should come more in incentivising proper vegetarian/vegan meal plans, restaurants, etc. Probably through education plans on the benefits and the right ways to approach plant-heavy diets as well as tax incentives and so on.

But... do we even want to phase out meat? I think for a large majority of people the answer is no and so we end up with products like "beyond meat". I think vegans are right, ethically and politically but in many cases it is very difficult for us to admit how wrong we are and it really doesn't help when the counterpart comes off as morally superior. There needs to be humility but at the same time, this is not a problem we can really ignore.

I think our societies are addicted to meat and so the solution to our meat problem should be the same kind of solutions we apply when we have systemic addiction problems. Education, rehabilitation, support. It's difficult for us to admit that we do have a problem, and being such a systemic world-wide scale problem... well, yeah, it's almost impossible.

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

No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.

$38B is only $100 per person. Even if it all went towards ground meat, it could only subsidize 4 lbs at a $30 -> $5 cost reduction.

To add, Americans average around 60 pounds of beef per person per year.

> the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.

Through no-tariff trade agreements, countries like the US who massively subsidize dump on countries that don't.

That would just make the 100$pp figure smaller.

Nobody likes actually looking at the numbers whenever they cry “subsidy!”

>No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.

This is such a wild thing to say without any proof. SA, for example uses way more petrol than the EU, largely because of direct subsidies that keep the price low [0] Now, notice how my example was a consumer subsidy, and consumers can't easily export petrol.

What you're maybe confused by is the concept of tariff-free trade that's become popular in the past few decades.

The US subsidizes corn farmers (who are free to sell corn to whomever they like anywhere in the world) not corn consumers. Most Western subsidies are to producers, for a variety of reasons.

A single global prevailing price isn't evidence of subsidies not working, it's just evidence of free trade.

The true counterfactual for Western subsidies is the global price if there weren't subsidies, which is usually pretty extreme, for example:

As we have seen, corn is one of the most highly subsidized crops in the US, with subsidy levels as high as 47% of farm income. Other important distortions characterize US corn markets, some more important to prices perhaps than high subsidy levels. [1]

Now keep in mind, that's not 'Corn is 47% cheaper because of subsidies' that's '47% of the effort dedicated to growing corn would not happen if not for subsidies.'

>$38B is only $100 per person. Even if it all went towards ground meat, it could only subsidize 4 lbs at a $30 - $5 cost reduction.

To make the claim you did just has no basis in logic. The US does not participate in direct subsidies like you claim. It instead gives farmers $38bn when the total value of cattle marked for slaughter in the US is $135bn. [2]

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?locat... [1] https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/15590/ [2] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...

1) He was talking about beef not other products

2) What does it matter how they give it? $38B is still only $100 per person. Are you saying they give more than $38B?

>What does it matter how they give it? $38B is still only $100 per person. Are you saying they give more than $38B?

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how supply and demand work. The money is not given directly to people so making it per Capita is an intellectually dishonest red herring.

$38bn creates an unknown amount of incremental supply of beef (since it is given to farmers). It does not lower aggregate beef prices by $38bn, it increases the effort dedicated to beef production by $38bn (even then, that's still a 25% subsidy relative to the entire market, you can't just make things per Capita to make them seem like a small number without context).

The increased supply form that new effort then interacts with demand. Both of those curves have slopes, so the interaction is much more complex than you're making it out to be.

Easily-available meat is Pandora's Box; we're never going to be able to move away from it. It is what it is. People's eating habits are so fucking hard to change. It should be insanely obvious that talking down to people like they're children and saying "your eating habits are bad and you should feel bad" doesn't work, and often backfires. We should focus on trying to bring efficiencies to our current pipelines instead of making these processed monstrosities and trying to shove them down everyone's throats from some imaginary moral high ground.

Our current pipelines of CAFOs and the majority of crops being dedicated for livestock and methane pollution is not acceptable, however. It's not possible to significantly improve the efficiency of the fundamentally inefficient process of growing plants to feed animals before feeding ourselves.

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.

> I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second

Anecdotally, my partner modified the menu at the bar he used to run to change the burger to be Beyond by default and beef optional. While it was clearly labelled on the menu, people didn't seem to read it/realise that the default was vegetarian. Everyone was very excited about the "new" burger, and most people were (happily) surprised to find out it was vegetarian.

So at least at this one bar in Amsterdam, Beyond fooled many meat eaters.

Like I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second

Eaten 'naked', no. Cover it with cheese, bacon, bbq sauce, onions, tomatoes etc. and I think it can easily compare to a Burger King pr McDonald Burger.

Covered with all that and you could probably serve it with no patty at all and half wouldn’t notice.

People would notice. There needs to be meat in there so customers can worry about food poisoning and complain that it isn't cooked exactly the right amount, regardless of how it is cooked. It is part of the burger tradition.

> Impossible started out strongly focused on the restaurant industry, and AFAIK still doesn't even bother with supermarkets

They are now widely available in supermarkets. In my big city they are carried by all the major chains, Safeway, Walmart, Giant, Target, Harris Teeter, Wegmans and Trader Joes.

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 wonder if any of those same microeconomics textbooks could give them any clues as to how they could increase demand...

> 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.

For reference: I looked up prices at a local grocery store just now and Beyond products are in the $12-16/lb range. I've never understood how something that is almost entirely pea/rice protein + vegetable oil can be so expensive.

That is top-shelf filet minion around here; even the fanciest hamburger meat doesn’t hit that price.

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.

the problem with meat has to do with green house gases that will make living on this planet quite uncomfortable for most people

And solution to that does not require forcing everyone to eat meat. Lab grown is a thing and realistically the direction things will go.

its mostly a castle in the air

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.

What about a price to CO2

Until that price shows up at the supermarket it is irrelevant.

Wouldn't that happen pretty quickly? I don't think meat producers would just happily cover for that extra fee.

no

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