Obvious Goes Beyond Meat | Hacker News Reader

Obvious Goes Beyond Meat

obvious.com

72 pointsatestu76 comments

Obligatory Title Police comment: not knowing that Obvious and Beyond Meat were companies, this headline gave no clues as to the topic of the article. In fact I only clicked to see how on earth that title could parse as English...

I know the submission just took the title from the original article, but when the article title is that obscure a little editorial summarisation wouldn't go amiss.

I'm as much a fan of clear, meaningful titles as the next person, but when life hands you such an unforced, ambiguous, deliciously absurd title, I think it's best to savor it.

The text sites this "51%" of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

It comes from here: http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climat...

I can cut this short for you. It's a lie dressed as calculation.

It calculates cow breathing for instance. And more heat produced while cooking meat compared to vegetables. Still they don't really show you the numbers.

EDIT: http://beyondmeat.com/ doesn't state how large environmental effect their product has.

Its like nearly all statistics, I have learned to ignore the large part of them. I hate it when people drop percentages based on correlations which they don't reference the actual methods. In my opinion, its what defines bad media/writing.

Slightly OT: Maybe I'm just underestimating to the power of familiarity as a plus in marketing, but I've never been able to wrap my head around meat-imitation vegetarian and vegan options.

I understand things like veggie dogs or burgers, patty and tube shaped foods are just plain convenient to store and eat. But I don't really get: "... Beyond Meat™, the first plant protein that looks, feels, tastes, and acts like meat." Wouldn't it be more prudent to create an identity for next level plant-based products than essentially "It's like meat but not"?

From my experience a lot of this is to do with people's "food culture" (I can't think of a better way to express that). People have ideas about what constitutes food or a "proper meal". (I've heard people say "My dad would be offended if I cooked him dinner and there wasn't any meat in it").

Give people something they recognise and they can handle it.

It's not just convenient to store and it, it's convenient to think about and fit into the (heavily marketed) idea of a proper meal (for vegetarians and vegans too).

(I've heard people say "My dad would be offended if I cooked him dinner and there wasn't any meat in it").

I love meat but I wouldn't be offended if somebody cooked me a meal and there wasn't any meat in it. But I might be a little offended if somebody cooked me a meal and there was fake meat in it.

Fake meat is like wearing a mask with my mother's face on it and expecting me to pretend you're her. It's not that simple.

It really isn't that profound. People take sugar and turn it into Red Vines. They're shaped, flavored and textured to be more enjoyable. Frankly, the heartiness, saltiness and other qualities of meat are good, so if you can take ingredients and make them more like that, it's not that different from taking flour and making a cupcake shaped the way a cupcake always looks.

Do you get offended by imitation vanilla, Mrs. Butterworth's and stevia? Lots of foods are imitations of other foods.

I'd say that a lot of the vegetarian food community is leaning towards that! Morningstar Veggie Patties (my favorite "faux-meat") doesn't taste like meat, nor does it really try to. It tastes like a tasty patty of mushrooms and veggies (and a bunch of soy thrown in for extra protein).

A great example of fake meat that isn't actually anything like meat is Morningstar's black bean burgers. They taste nothing like meat (which is good, because overly realistic veggie meat is uncanny valley to me), but they still give the effect of a hamburger and taste delicious.

I'm a vegetarian and I like faux meat and veggie "burgers" for the convenience. But I don't want them to look or taste too real. :)

Well, I don't know about the other ones, but if this actually acts like meat, then that can be pretty damn convenient in adapting recipes to be Vegan.

I can't imagine it actually acts like meat at a chemical level though. Like, if you cook this stuff at 60-65 celsius, it's probably not going to cook the same as a cut of meat.

It makes a lot more sense when you observe that veg%ans are not opposed to eating meat but rather to killing animals. Witness PETA's push for lab-grown meat replacements.

That said, many veg%ans (myself included) nevertheless find meat-mimicking products off-putting and prefer lesser-processed protein sources.

> are not opposed to eating meat but rather to killing animals

That is not at all true. It may be true for some people, but it's hardly universal. Some people don't like meat, some people don't digest it well, some people avoid it for health reasons.

It's only a small subset that avoid meat because they are opposed to killing animals. You can tell based on if they avoid leather as well.

Yes, but based on the GP's question I assume he was focusing his question on the subset that is opposed to killing animals – the other subsets would not seem at odds with their impetus for being veg%an by enjoying fake meat.

Is "veg%an" different than "vegan"? I thought this was a typo until you used the same spelling twice. (I'm a vegetarian.)

The SQL statement:

  select * from diets where name like 'veg%an'

Will match both 'vegan' and 'vegetarian'. The '%' wildcard matches any string of zero or more characters.

Incidentally, it's more commonly written as veg*n among non-nerds.

Unfortunately writing it twice causes HN to italicize stuff: vegn vegn :/

Based on the Obvious posting, I assume that Beyond Meat is targeted at all the meat-eaters who are saying things like, "I would love to become vegetarian... But I could never give up chicken." To get large quantities of people to drop meat you'll need a product that appeals to those that don't really want to.

I've been a vegetarian for 3 or 4 years now. The hardest part for 'meaters' to understand is that I don't want imitation meat. There is far too much good food for me to be eating pretend meat.

Also, the state of imitation meat products is already quite good. I 100% guarantee that the average person couldn't tell the difference between ground beef and 'ground round' in chili. I've fooled too many people to count now. Chicken is bland anyway, so why bother simulating them when you can use tofu or some other meaty vegetable instead.

I'm not a "meater" and yet I like imitation meat. Maybe a fake hot dog on the rare occasion. I concur with everything else you said though.

Interesting that nobody tries to make meat look, feel & taste like vegetables. And that carnivores don't have support groups.

Most meat eaters have the option of eating vegetables without violating any code of ethics or health, so there's little point in imitating them. Nonetheless, people do go out of their way to make meat taste like vegetables — or do you take your meat with no seasoning at all?

Also, meat-eaters do have a support group — it's called the whole world. Just mention vegetarian food and more likely than not somebody will come out and slag them or their choices. Conversely, the most likely response when you mention getting some In-N-Out is "Mmm, that sounds good."

"or do you take your meat with no seasoning at all?"

Good meat cooked right needs no seasoning. Even when adding flavors to improve sub-par meat, we don't make it taste like carrots or lettuce etc.

Sure we do! We have insanely good support groups! Ever been to a rib cook off? http://www.nuggetribcookoff.com/ Every year man. Every year.

> I've never been able to wrap my head around meat-imitation > vegetarian and vegan options

I was inching towards becoming a vegetarian. Being a foodie is a pretty effective strategy.

Substitutes are great because vegetarian food is (can be) great. Thai panang curry made with seitan tastes great. Brown rice and Field Roast (tm) tastes great. Deep fried tofu tastes great.

Then it's not about giving up meat. It's more like choosing something else and not having time for meat.

An different example. I'm now working towards the troglodiet, informed by Dr Terry Wahls, Eat To Live, 4 Hour Body, etc. Veggies, veggies, and more veggies. Meat. Seeds and nuts. Legumes.

Wahls suggests eating 9 cups of fruit and veggies a day (in addition to the rest). If you can do that, you don't have time, attention, appetite, craving, etc for simple carbs like treats, rice, pasta, potato.

(I coined the term "troglodiet". Hysterical, right?)

It depends on the reason. I've known vegetarians who didn't eat meat because they were disgusted at the thought of consuming animal flesh. For them, fake animal flesh has about the same appeal as serving to a carnivore a beef product that has been formed to resemble a human forearm.

While I applaud anyone who gives up eating lots of animal protein (I believe it is bad for their health, and I know it is bad for our environment by using about 10x more water and energy for production), there is this:

why not just eat regular vegetarian foods? Why fake meat?

We eat vegetarian with little bits of seafood (Pescatarians), BTW.

I've often wondered (and been asked) this. I haven't eaten meat for about twenty years now.

My wife and I purchase and eat plenty of fake-meat products. It's frankly, simple. Easy to prepare, easy to eat. Fairly high in calories and protein for effort-expended compared to many alternatives.

The other interesting question was posed by another commenter who asked why fake-meat in terms of flavors, instead of finding their own identity. The interesting thing is that I don't think most of these things have much flavor either way. Does chicken have much flavor? The veggie-chicken doesn't. It's more of a high-protein, high-calorie carrier of other flavors. Dip it in siracha, fry it and make orange 'chicken'. All in all it doesn't contribute much flavor to the meal, just substance.

All of that said, I think of it as junk food (not compared to meat, but compared to other vegetable based meals). I'd much rather get better about putting together more balanced dishes.

The tasty parts of chicken have a lot of flavor, you can pretty much boil and eat drumsticks (in skin) with no seasoning whatsoever. It is white meat that is tasteless and needs a lot of postprocessing. (or mayo, mayo makes everything taste good...)

That makes sense. I think it's the white meat that's imitated.

I was a strict vegetarian for 12 years. Now, I eat seafood pretty regularly.

I'm also an active person, which includes a lot of strength training. "Regular" vegetarian foods don't have enough protein. So veggie burgers are a staple of my diet. (Morning Star Farms brand Grillers Prime are the highest calorie, highest protein, best taste burgers I've found.) Also, I gave up meat for ethical reasons - I don't value those ethical reasons as much as I used to, hence the seafood. But I always have liked and missed meat. Even now, although I won't eat one, a cheeseburger would be great.

Why not just eat regular vegetarian foods? Why fake meat?

Many people love the taste of meat, plain and simple.

If I'm craving a medium rare NY Strip steak, neither a Portobello mushroom nor Ahi tuna filet will quite satiate that desire, no matter how good they taste.

A fake meat that successfully replicates the flavor profile and mouthfeel of meat while providing the ethical and health benefits of vegetables would be a game-changer.

Yeah. I'm trying to cut meat out for health reasons but I have 30 years' meat-eating inertia behind me. And I like the taste/texture of meat.

I will happily buy something that gets me 80-85% of the way there without the health hit or energy expenditures related to real meat. I generally do not eat red meat anyway, so that loosens the constraints a bit - approximating chicken seems like it would be far, far easier to pull off than a rare steak.

Also, it's different on the coasts, but here in the Midwest finding vegetarian meals out is a trial sometimes. A lot of places' "vegetarian" option is pasta with a cream sauce, or something with a ton of cheese. If they can sell this to restaurants to sub in for a chicken breast or the like, that would make it easier to skip meat when eating out.

There's kind of a sliding scale in meatiness from ordinary tofu to smart dogs to "soysages" (soy sausage links) to the product being developed in the article. They all have a place. There are some dishes that benefit from that texture.

Vegetarians don't need to eat less meat; meat eaters need to less meat. Fake meat tries to accommodate meat eaters taste preferences.

How much will it cost in my local grocery store? Will it be cheaper than regular (non-fancy/organic/free range) chicken by the pound and by the calorie?

Does it have all of the same amino acids that chicken has in close enough to the same amounts to completely replace real meat without having to think about changing the rest of your diet to compensate?

Genuinely curious.

Meat is not bad for the environment. Factory farms are indeed terrible, but they're not the only way to raise animals. On the other hand, grain agriculture is beyond fixing See http://lierrekeith.com/vegmyth.htm for a great intro.

Meat is also healthy. Grains are not. See any of these

Good Calories Bad Calories/Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes, The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf, http://www.marksdailyapple.com/cholesterol/#axzz1wxjdQqRB

Eat real food.

Thank you for making this point. A lot of the other commenters here start by stating that meat is definitely bad for you and then go on to make some point about the article based on that initial premise. It would seem that meat may in fact be quite good for humans to eat and it's really disturbing how ingrained the idea that meat is bad has been drilled into our entire society.

No matter how you slice it (no pun intended), raising an animal for human consumption is a net energy loss. AFAICT, it's just a mathematical fact. Unless you have magic cows that photosynthesize, you are taking resources that could have gone toward supporting a human being and instead using them to grow an animal.

I mean, if you're happy with your Neo-Atkins Diet, that's cool, but enough already with this looking down on people who don't eat as trendily as you do.

What if the animal ate only grass?

Also, keep in mind that modern grain agriculture is 100% dependent on fossil fuels.

Back in the day, animals were raised on the farm along with vegetables. The animals ate the cellulose (inedible to us) and scraps and created protein. They also created fertilizer (today it is synthesized from fossil fuels and wreaks environmental havoc - the Dead Zone at the mouth of the Mississippi is mostly caused by nitrogen runoff from farms) and ate bugs, so there was no need for pesticides.

I can't cite an authoritative source but I think the idea is the amount of unforested, undeveloped grassland on the planet is nowhere near enough to support the current meat intake of the world population. There are actually similar issues with organic vegetables too.

Of course if people wanted to eat much less meat, and if there were a lot fewer people, things might work better sure.

That's probably true. However, like I said above, our agriculture is also unsustainable. Most of the increase in crop yields over the past few decades have come as a result of fossil fuel-based fertilizers. Without oil yields would plummet. Overpopulation is the problem.

Ideally, animals should be raised either on land that's not suitable for agriculture, or on the farm, eating the inedible plant parts and providing more of a closed-loop ecosystem.

Also, I just want to make it clear that I'm not trying to bash vegetarians. Just the opposite - I think it's great that people care. Eating ethically is very important to me. I've given it a lot of thought, and that's precisely the reason I eat local pastured meat.

I have to recommend http://lierrekeith.com/vegmyth.htm again for anyone who's interested in this issue.

Agreed! Taubes' writing is excellent and Paleo is a great way to lose weight and improve overall health markers (cholesterol, blood pressure, etc).

Not to parrot Michael Pollan too much, but I think I'll stick to eating food. His latest book provides plenty of skepticism on whether eating animal protein actually leads to cancer, obesity, type II, &c... or if it is perhaps due to an overly reductive food culture in the West.

What nutritionists are saying is good for us is changing ever decade. I'm going to stick to eating minimally processed food in moderation.

Vegetables are food. And even better still, they have zero cholesterol and basically provide much the same benefits without the bad side effects. Say what you want about the flip-flopping nature of nutrition trends, there is very little scientific data that shows that milk, cheese and red meat don't cause heart disease and other health concerns. Broccoli tends not to.

There's very little evidence that it does. You just have to look at the recent article on salt (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069613) to see that conventional wisdom is often flawed. Similar cases were made for eating cholesterol (it has no effect on blood cholesterol) and fibre (doesn't prevent bowel cancer).

There is strong evidence that eating a "western diet", high in calories and processed food, will cause obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc. but there's a lot of disagreement as to what that root cause is.

Oh I completely agree. Vegetables are great food. Whole grains are great sources of yummy carbs. And meats in moderation are likely Just Fine. Broccoli is food, highly processed soy injected with omega-3s and corn is a food-product, not food.

Fair enough. I'm not saying eating anything vegetarian, no matter how processed, is good for you. Just clarifying that, in my opinion, avoiding meat if you can is healthier.

Vegetables are real food. Fake meat is not.

Yum, fake chicken strips: "Water, Soy Protein Isolate, Pea Protein Isolate, Amaranth, Chicken Flavor (Maltodextrin, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavoring), Soy Fiber, Carrot Fiber, Canola Oil, Dipotassium Phosphate, Titanium Dioxide, White Vinegar" (http://beyondmeat.com/products/)

I'll stick with Pollan's 5 ingredient rule as well.

I think they're working on a version that's just "Water, Soy Protein Isolate, Pea Protein Isolate, Dipotassium Phosphate, and Titanium Dioxide", so you and Pollan can eat that.

Pollan's rule is (at least as Bittman quotes it) five recognizable or pronounceable ingredients.

That makes more sense!

These guys are doing such awesome stuff.

I like eating meat, but would love to live in a world where Big Macs are made from vegetable protein and all meat is raised locally/humanely and fed a healthy diet.

Seeing as how Taco Bell recently got dinged for using mostly soy (only 35% was beef) in their beef tacos, have no fear, your McD's meal will probably be the first to become all-veggie as soon as they can lower the FDA's definition of what qualifies as meat.

The article gave me hope. Then when I clicked through to the website and looked at the ingredients, I was let down. The 'chicken strips' seem only marginally better than the soy sausages in our supermarkets already. I guess I was expecting some miraculous new ingredient. It's nice they have amaranth in there but it doesn't exactly seem groundbreaking.

An interesting article from two years ago about the product development (the names in the "About" page here match up to the Mizzou team in the article):

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993883,00....

Is this perhaps VC Vinod Khosla's stealth meat startup?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/09/13/vinod-khos...

I don't get it, but that may be because I don't have a problem eating meat -- our emotions are not evolved to live in the world we live in now, so they shouldn't be used to derive what we should eat.

Our emotions are not evolved to use iPhones or modern medicine either.

Animals eat other animals because have no alternative. Humans have the knowledge, technology, and (I hope) empathy to eat without killing animals.

I'm more excited about synthetic meat R&D. Rather than trying to make soy-based products more like meat in taste and texture, why not just create meat in a test-tube, sans the animal?

This has been discussed previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3873470 It seems to be really hard to create tissues.

I like that Beyond Meat is trying to offer better vegan options. The product looks interesting, but after reading the ingredients, http://beyondmeat.com/products/ , I doubt I will try it. Titanium Dioxide (what color is it normally), Dipotassium Phosphate and tons of Phytoestrogens (Soy) don't sound so tasty.

Beyond Meat is people!

#FirstWorldProblems

This web page is a good example of simplicity gone too far. I guess you don't know where the boundaries are until you have crossed them. This design is off-puttingly empty. I am not saying you have to fill it with bling, but you have to have something to focus on. Just my two cents.

> This web page is a good example of simplicity gone too far

It's extremely readable and loads very quickly. I wish more pages would go too far.

Edit: Although given its otherwise commendable minimalism it seems odd that it goes to the trouble of using a non-system font.

I totally disagree. I jumped back just to comment how nice the design is: large typography, sparing color, reasonable line spacing, and no junk. Although I do think the column width could be about 20% narrower, overall, it's fantastic.

I think a subtle textured background would be a welcome addition as well.

Font size is also far too large for readability.

On the contrary - upon seeing this I immediately got the urge to go remove some more shit from my site's layout.

> you have to have something to focus on.

Focus on the words.

I read most multi-paragraph articles using Readability to strip out extraneous formatting.

I could use a little texture on there as well.

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