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Comment by jebarker | Hacker News Reader

I would guess the primary target market is ex meat eaters that are trying to go vegetarian but have been raised to enjoy the taste/texture of meat. I am in this group. I agree it’s not a very large market for the reasons you stated above. However, maybe BM hoped they could grow that market, I.e. convince more meat eaters to give it up for ethical reasons.

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I am in a similar group; the mostly-vegetarian. Chicken when I don't have a real choice, red meat at a wedding like once a year or something.

I like beyond meat products, the price is obviously a problem but they go on sale locally frequently enough to be a good substitute for us.

Something about them I HATE though is that they have two burger products that are extremely similar with one main difference: product A is kept frozen and requires thawing to cool properly and product B is kept frozen and cooks from frozen.

They are so similar that we accidentally get the wrong one all the time.

Once cooked, both products are indistinguishable from an eating perspective. Get product A the fuck outta here, please.

Same. Chicken, eggs, and yogurt are the only animal products I consume regularly.

"raised to enjoy the taste/texture of meat"

Humans have evolved to enjoy the taste/texture/smell of cooked meat

Yeah, their comment gave me a chuckle. lol

Yeah. HN doesn't really have a sense of humour, which I used to find frustrating, but which (having now spent a lot more time on other forums, like Reddit), I fully appreciate the wisdom of.

I am, along certain axes, a big fan of DIY forums like the r/DIYUK subreddit, and it pisses me off to no end that when anybody asks a serious question looking for serious help the top 5 comments will, as like as not, be bullshit, cheap, obvious, "funny" one-liners from people whose sense of humour has never evolved beyond the playground and that contain zero useful information. I've even considered volunteering as a mod on that particular sub just so I can delete all of these "humorous" comments so that the actual useful information makes it to the top of the page. So, yeah, I've come around to the HN point of view on humour.

But, nevertheless, like you, I found this funny.

Slashdot's system was best. No upvoting, certainly no downvoting, just a small vocabulary of tags: "informative", "insightful", "irrelevant", etc. And of course "funny". That way you can literally turn the humor off!

If you speak with vegetarians/vegans who have been raised that way and never eaten meat you will find many that are repulsed by it. Nurture seems to be able to override nature here and, as far as I’m aware, there’s no strong evidence that we’re born with an inherent taste for meat, we’re just born with bodies that need certain nutrients that are easily obtained from meat but can be found elsewhere.

I would be willing to bet if a lifelong vegan hadn't eaten in days and smelled a freshly cooked bacon cheeseburger they would start salivating. And I bet they would find it delicious if they ate it.

I think it would be more like the reaction a "normal" meat eater would have when presented with a strange food, like snails, or grasshoppers. You'd probably eat it in desperation but I don't think it would register as food.

No. Humans have actually evolved to find the smell and taste of COOKED meat to be delicious because it is so energy and nutrition dense eating it gave a huge evolutionary advantage to people who ate it.

Just because something is evolutionarily advantageous doesn't mean everyone has to like it. Otherwise ace people would not exist at all…

This is the same kind of hardwired response that makes humans find the smell of rotten things disgusting.

I assure you that many vegan/vegetarian people feel the same way about meat. It is inherently repulsive because they have no experience with it or have lost its taste. This isn’t something that just reactivates because they’re hungry; you’d have to reacclimate them to meat before it will go away.

And I simply don't find such claims plausible based on the facts of human evolution. Even someone who has never smelled putrid tissue before will find the smell revolting. Finding the smell of cooked meat appetizing is just as hard wired. It would make for a fascinating study. I wonder how they quantify salivation in a lab.

Can you point to any supporting evidence for the claim that humans have evolved an innate “finding meat delicious trait” or alternatively evidence that suggests it’s not purely cultural? I’m genuinely interested as I haven’t found any evidence supporting the claim.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/07/how-early-hu...

I don’t believe that article supports your claim. It doesn’t claim humans innately prefer meat smell/taste, just that we evolved to seek out smell and flavor complexity, which cooking— meat or otherwise - provides. You could just as easily make the same argument about cooked vegetables vs raw vegetables and claim humans have an innate desire for vegetables.

Veganism would be a lot more popular if people really found the taste of plants much more delicious than the taste of meat.

Why would it have to only be ex-meat eaters? It may be just my (admittedly biased) opinion, but I think that Big Meat has managed to turn meat-eating into a quasi-religion — almost like football. I also try to not shy away from knowing where my food comes from, and how it was processed and produced; if you know about the cruel and unsanitary living conditions for cattle, the underpaid and overworked labor that helps process it, and the deforestation and water needed in order to produce it... you then find the meat does not go down as easy anymore.

Which, not to rain down on everyone's BBQ, but I personally find it ridiculous how we have been protecting people's feelings during flip-a-patty time more than the environment!

Sorry for the rant — not personally directed at you... but, I ... clearly feel strongly about the subject.

Full disclosure: not vegan nor vegetarian, and perhaps even a hypocrite for writing a (hopefully not too) holier-than-thou rant and eating unhealthy amounts of junk food occasionally.

I totally agree with your strong feelings on the meat industry. The reason I said the main market is ex meat eaters is because if you’re still eating meat then any craving for the taste/texture/smell of meat is at least getting partially satisfied by the meat you’re still eating. There’s definitely some market for people just trying to cut down on meat though, and that’s great too.

Thanks for steelmanning my argument.

Definitely agree that texture (and price) will play a big factor in weaning off people from authentic meat.

I hope we are able to surpass the challenges we're facing and live to see healthy food sources that are also within reach (physically and economically) for all people.

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