Why do you think that "ethical vegans" like the "taste of plants" any more than anyone else? The whole point of being an ethical vegan/vegetarian is to not consume animals, not because you don't like the taste.
Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers. Sure, they're not perfect from a health food point of view, but they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than your average hamburger patty. So from a health conscious point of view, it's a decent substitute.
Then there are the people who just want to reduce their meat consumption overall. Maybe they're not vegan or vegetarian, but they're trying to watch their saturated fat intake, or reduce their carbon impact, or they suffer from gout and are trying to reduce the amount of meat they eat to ease that.
Sometimes you just want to go out with your friends for a burger, and the Beyond patty can make a better substitute than a black bean or mushroom patty that used to be common.
And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it, it usually costs the same as a beef patty; it just provides another option, for the days I want to skip meat. I have, for a long time, done a low meat diet; I don't avoid it entirely, but I try not to eat it at every meal. It provides a nice alternative for that.
Is it a bit of a niche market? Sure. But, not every product needs to be for everyone.
Not sure what health-conscious people you know, but I'd hazard to guess that most would choose the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man over the ultra-processed slurry of starches and oils.
If you buy a Beyond patty, it has way more sodium than ground beef you'd buy at a grocerty store. Comparing it with a fast food burger isn't really fair.
I just did a quick search on Uber Eats in NYC. Every Beyond Burger I found was between $3-5 more than a regular burger. That’s the reason I stopped eating them, I actually quite like the texture and flavor. I just don’t like the price.
It's important to remember also that not athletic individuals are high achieving bodybuilders with super strict macro diets. Most other sports only require a moderate attention to diet, especially at an amateur level. Bodybuilding is very diet focused, rather than strength and skill focused.
a beyond burger has 310mg https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/products/the-beyond-burger
They are lower in fat and total calories but they are obviously more processed = salt. Even a mcdonalds burger patty (without the bun) has less salt.
If those 2 things are your barometer for healthy… it’s not a clear win.
It’s ultra processed food devoid of micronutrients with low quality protein and poor bioavailability.
Health conscious folks would definitely not choose this. In fact, it’s all the things you try to avoid as soon as you start being health conscious. Folks who want to believe they are being health conscious may be convinced via marketing to buy it, but anyone seriously invested in their nutrition would steer very clear of these.
I don't know man. I'm a health conscious person and I could just as easily choose normal chicken meat, or a beef steak that's not a hamburger, or fatty fish (omega-3!!). Why would I choose a hamburger substitute? I don't even particularly crave hamburgers.
I took a look at the ingredients list of the Dutch version, and it seems to be okay when it comes to amount of industrial fillers. It seems the preservative (potassium lactate) is the only problem, everything else seems acceptable. So I guess it's not that bad, but I still don't still really have a reason to choose it.
On days when I don't particularly want to eat a lot of meat, I just eat more rice, vegetables and beans. It's not that hard?
I think the OP is right: their niche seemed to be people who crave something like a hamburger or at least real meat while having an ideological opposition against meat and enough money.
The only people i ever hear say anything positive about beyond burger (after the novelty wore off) was meat eaters. Vegeterians, for whatever reason, tended not to like it. But meat eaters were always going to choose meat anyways, so it seems like nobody actually bought it.
You can agree with this sentiment (ideology?) and not be vegan, if you aren't willing to give up meat. giving up meat is what defines this demographic.
Relative to a population of people willing to give up meat, would you assume there is no difference in "liking how plants taste" versus the general population? I'd assume it correlates directly with "willingness to give up meat".
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers.
Maybe, but in context its a false dichotomy, why wouldn't they pick better substitutes e.g. non-average meat?
I'm a vegetarian. I have never _not_ paid at least $2 premium to sub in an Impossible or Beyond patty. I've had tons of them, there are some in my freezer.
Do some people occasionally eat fake meat? Sure. Enough to build a sustainable business? Less clear.
Yellow Pea Protein, Avocado Oil, Natural Flavors, Brown Rice Protein, Red Lentil Protein, 2% or less of Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Pea Starch, Potassium Lactate (to preserve freshness), Faba Bean Protein, Apple Extract, Pomegranate Concentrate, Potassium Salt, Spice, Vinegar, Vegetable Juice Color (with Beet).
Except for Vinegar, every one of these is an industrially processed/extracted/refined ingredient that humans never ate until within the last ~50 years.
We have no way to even know if many of these are safe let alone healthy.
I don't know of any evidence that these things are a decent substitute for meat and salt which humans have been eating for our entire history. And for those who actually believe animal fat and salt are unhealthy one could make burgers with lean meat and less or no salt.
Why? Carbs and processed oils bound together by stodge isn’t healthier than fried ground beef.
I seriously doubt that health-conscious people would pick hyper-processed plants that are meant to resemble meat over plain meat+bread+vegetables that make up a non-fast-food hamburger.
I have friend who was vegan for 20 years, and when we went to good restaurant and he wanted to choose between vegan patty burger and real one, he chose real one due to all chemical industrial crap they put in those veggie patties and chose a good Swiss beef instead of questionable worse-tasting content. Yes, he literally stopped being vegan at that point, although he still is on most days since then.
Its subpar product, with way too much questionable chemistry, worse taste (or more like structure&taste) and impact on environment is... questionable too, maybe less than real beef but probably not massively. What could be acceptable for environmental impact is lab grown real meat but even that seems to not go the direction one would expect.
Why not? I think there's a false conflation of veganism and health food (and gluten-free, though that's not relevant in this discussion). I love burgers, and fried chicken, and crappy chicken nuggets, but I don't want more animals to have to suffer for my sake than is necessary. I disagree on how hyper-specific that niche is.
IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.
This is the real problem. Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now. $38 billion dollars in the US each year to subsidize meat and dairy, but only $17 million goes to fruit and vegetable farmers. It's completely backwards, especially considering the climate impact on meat and dairy farming.
Indeed. I ate at two different vegan restaurants in a city I visited recently and they both were on par with bar or diner food, but vegan. Plenty of vegans (I'm not one, but I've got eyes...) clearly don't have a problem with that.
At this point, in Germany at least, discounter brands like Lidl and Aldi have beaten Beyond Meat at their game though. They produce alternatives that taste as good or better, for significantly less money.
We don’t need meat alternatives. Vegan diet is cardiovascularly extremely healthy, seems to protect against most cancers, tastes good and is most importantly ethically and environmentally only viable option at this point. It’s pretty cheap as well, tofu, lentils and veggies are not exactly expensive even without all the gazillion subsidiaries pumped into meat production. [Of course your vegan diet can consist of eating only canned soda and potato chips and that is not healthy nor cheap, but the problem there is that you are a moron, not that you are vegan].
So the problem with meat alternatives is that you don’t really need them and if you want burger patties etc. you can make them at home pretty easily or these days buy cheaper alternatives sold in most supermarkets.
I have never tried BeyondMeat but I’d be surprised that it’s so bad.
And I have eaten many classic vegan burger alternatives based on lentils, peas and chickpeas. They didn’t aim to taste like meat and were actually edible.
Still, one wonders does “buying a fake burger at the ball park with my friends” translate to actual fandom and further consumption or is it just a a captive consume picking the least-worst option.
The impression I’ve gotten is for the latter.
This is a good filler product.
I never understood this argument: what's the problem with consuming proportionately more to make up for the reduction?
I'm not rushing to demand IV tylenol because its oral bioavailability is only 80%-90%, which is around the "loss" we're talking for plant vs animal protein on average. And the ultraprocessing should improve plant's profile here.
Because the macros suck. If you’re trying to hit certain protein / carb / fat ratios, eating more of the “protein” means eating a lot more carbs and fat too, which often isn’t the goal.
Your analogy is not accurate, it would be more like waking up in pain in the middle of the night after a bad injury, and taking t3s with codeine+ caffeine, and wanting more codeine without wanting the added caffeine.
I feel like it'll take another 5 years for this "bio-availability" myth to die out.
Do people genuinely think that 'ethical' vegans and vegetarians are doing it because they don't like meat? Or genuinely not comprehend the idea of taking an ethical stance even if you actually like something?
For illustration, human baby could be the best tasting barbecue on the planet, but even if it was I would still think that murdering children for my dinner would be wrong and wouldn't do it. Ethical vegans and vegetarians feel similarly about eating meat, that it's (often) delicious but killing animals for food is wrong. Offering them a "meat without any of the suffering" option, in theory, has quite a large audience.
Plus as a meat-eater who had a vegetarian partner for a few years, things like impossible mince also made it easier for me to cook things we could both enjoy, and things like beyond/impossible made eating out a little easier in burger joints etc.
Still, I don't really have a reason to buy it. I don't avoid meat. I specifically eat beef for, for example, creatine and iron. But I guess it is good for people who crave beef yet have an ideological resistance against meat, a niche which I'm not sure how big it is.
In my part of the world, a burger is a type of sandwhich, and the definition doesn't require meat. So it's a burger whether it contains beef, fish, chicken, a vegan patty, a large slice of tomato, or whatever.
And it’s not really about the taste, it’s more about form factor of a “protein fried patty” in a sandwich. Could easily be falafel.
Normal daily food is of course actual vegan/vegetarian food that doesn’t need to pretend to be meat.
I'm an occasional buyer of their product, but the issue for me is just the versatility. It's really only a replacement for the most generic ways to prepare a burger/sausage. The moment you try to use the ground beef in, say, a chili recipe, it's a totally mis-matched flavor
So like, sure it's fine, but it is already in a tough competition with other plant based foods.
This has been the exact opposite of my experience.
source: vegan for 14 years, vegetarian for 2 years prior to that, carnist for the initial 22 years. :)
There are plenty of meat eaters who want to eat these as a way to cut down their meat consumption. They don't want to become vegetarians, though.
Just because Beyond as a company is doing bad doesn't mean the whole category of products is doing bad.
I’ma regular guy who likes burgers but is very worried about the effects cattle farming has on the planet. I don’t love killing animals so I can have a tastier meal either.
A lot of Indian/Brahmin food is exactly that. Its insanely delicious.
And we have Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat(is that the name?). Both instead of going "vegetarian done well is superb" went to "sorry its a sad reminder of a hamburger". And thats a problem. Nobody wants to be reminded that this is $10/lb and real hamburger is $5/lb.
Ive also had problems with other 'meat substitues'. They're almost always plasticy or fake tasting, or chemically off.
Whereas my tofu saag is delicious. And no meet or cheese needed... Although my favorite is saag paneer (cheese). I stay away from the fake-almost-but-not-quite foods.
There's no premium for the plant based versions I don't think (or if there is it's small enough that I never noticed), and I think you're underestimating how many vegans/vegetarians still want junk food.
I'm a strict vegetarian myself and have been for about ten years. But as much as I love plant foods, I absolutely miss meat — I was never a big meat eater, but I would enjoy burgers, salami, pepperoni, bacon, Italian meatballs, prosciutto, things like that.
I dislike Beyond products, which taste a bit weird and metallic to me. The only imitation meat product I've remotely enjoyed is Impossible Burger. Nobody has managed to make anything else — if someone would nail plant-based pepperoni or bacon I would be all over it.
I want not-meat that is definitely not meat.
I don't see why this follows. There are a lot of ethical vegans and vegetarians who like junk food. And these patties have higher protein than less processed plant based alternatives, which is important to a lot of people. It's just that vegetarians and vegans are a small portion of the overall "burger" market.
I suspect the "meat" branding helped early on, because it got some people to give it a try who otherwise never would have. There were other plant-based burgers on the market already but Beyond really exploded quickly.
It's just that it didn't really live up to the hype enough for meat eaters to go back for a second helping after the novelty wore off. So at this point the "meat" in the brand name isn't doing anything.
I think the part that’s accurate is that it’s hard to get past the highly processed hurdle for the kind of people that think critically about food.
But vegans aren’t the target market.
1. non-vegans eating with vegans at a vegan restaurant, where eating there wasn't their choice (they were craving a burger), and so, being forced to order off this menu, will choose the most burger-like thing on the menu.
2. non-vegans eating with vegans at a non-vegan restaurant, where for whatever reason they feel the need to impress / not-offend the vegan by eating vegan food as well. (Think "first date" or "client meeting.")
If animal agriculture was not subsidized, I expect plant based "meats" would be on par or cheaper than real meat.
Wealthy hippies, vegans, and yuppies.
Beyond sausage links are damn good.
The fact that the Beyond Burger sells in mainstream grocery stores tells you all that you need to know: it's popular (enough). There are muliple products in this niche in my not-very-large grocery store.
Grocery stores don't stock products that don't sell. No matter how you personally think it doesn't have a niche.
The demographic that Beyond and Impossible claimed to be chasing was the like 85% of Americans that answered polls about wanting to eat less meat (back in the early 201Xs). "Meatless Monday", weeknight vegetarian... Whatever. Thats who they pitched investors on.
It's also a market that never materialized, whether because it was always a mirage of push polling or because an ascendant fascist GOP has made meat eating a cornerstone of their identity or COVID or whatever.
I never thought the notion of "let's make the veggie burger taste like meat" made any sense.
Yes it was generally more expensive, for the worst quality meat but otherwise I think it was at a reasonable medium price point.
I’ve personally never met another vegan who chose this lifestyle for “diet” reasons. They’ll be out there for sure, but for the folks I know It’s always been about the animals.
Just because I choose not to eat animals doesn’t mean I’m choosing to be healthy :) I should focus more on the food that I eat but alas, it’s just not how I roll at the moment.
You do get some unintentional health benefits here and there (lower cholesterol in my case) but other trade-offs too for those like me that aren’t as diligent as they should be (lower b-12, iron etc).
This is completely unrelated to the question of “can you be healthy as a vegan”. To that I would say absolutely. Is it the reason most people choose to be vegan - my gut would say no (but I’m not claiming this as fact).
Goddamn I love me some Oreos.
Plus, it’s easier to sit atop a high horse when you’re not eating it ;)
what a weird form of gatekeeping. at least they're using some form of ethics and trying to change the world in a way they're able to.
coming from a non-vegan, btw, even though this shouldn't even be a requirement.
I had really hoped that people would say, "Well, if it tastes close enough, then how about I go for the cruelty-free version." And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food hamburger.
Perhaps the cognitive dissonance is just too much. The world would be a better place if we ate less meat, even if we don't eliminate it entirely. But to acknowledge the cruelty by avoiding it sometimes means facing it when you do choose animal protein.
The fact that it doesn't taste close to the original and that it commands a price premium is why I ultimately gave up on it. Where I might use beyond, I can usually get a healthier option using ground turkey instead with a much more agreeable flavor and price.
But really, I've just focused on making more meatless dishes in general. Highlighting the flavor of legumes and mushrooms beats trying to fake the flavor of beef.
I think it actually is "Beyond" meat, in that sense.
But at a much higher price? The value is not really there IMO.
From their performance it seems like the intersection of (cares about animals | methane emissions) & doesn't mind health effects & less price sensitive & must eat hamburger-likes is too small.
Interesting point on cognitive dissonance though. I think it's possible to draw a rational tradeoff between acceptable amount of (externalised) cruelty and personal benefits of eating meat - no cognitive dissonance needed.
But I do wonder what you mean when you say “cruelty” in the context of cattle.
Having lived in/around rural livestock production most of my life, I can tell you that most cattle operations I am familiar with take excellent care of the their animals. Minimizing stress is absolutely a top goal for them.
Pork, on the other hand, is almost always produced in a horrifying, cruel way. Confinement barns are terrible in every sense of the word. Pigs are treated without respect from cradle to grave.
It's not, though. Vegans that I know always proselytize about how "you can't even tell the difference" but I can tell the difference.
I don't understand the weird vegan obsession with eating fake food. Edible oil product "vegan cheese" and other junk.
If you want to eat meat, eat it. If you don't, don't. You do you, but don't try to sell me on disgusting fake food.
They should just use that as a label: https://xkcd.com/641/
Would you like the cruel or cruelty-free patty?
A cow takes about 10x as much corn per serving of meat, so that's 10x as many critters killed, and then you have to kill the cow.
The creatures that are killed in the field, or on the road or whatever, they are living their little lives eating and screwing and doing all the fun stuff creatures do until they get brained by a tilling disk or whatever.
A cow on the other hand, in a U.S. cafo? I mean if you like wading through your own shit, nose to asshole with all your compatriots, eating food that your GI tract doesn't even like that much so that you can get overweight? No stimulus, no sex, no variance in diet, then you'd love to be a cow.
For me, I just don't want to eat that.
I tell myself that in the long-term the pros outweigh the con, if you value being on the right side of morality
A lot of the meat i consume is from restaurants and fast food, it isn't easy to get a meat alternative, that isn't part of a "veggie" item that has different ingredients (if available at all). For example, a "beyond cheeseburger" that uses the same sauce,buns,prep as a regular cheeseburger would be nice, but usually it's under a "veggie burger" with vegetable centric things with it.
Tangentially, indian food is awesome for avoiding meat, but restaurant ordered indian food isn't healthy if you eat all the time (a couple of times a month is ok, if you're fit).
The person you are replying to is consciously trying to make the world a better place, and probably succeeding in a small way. Are they perfect? No. But they are literally sacrificing something for the good of someone (or something) else. This is the definition of altruism.
For some reason, you felt the need to criticize them for not being more altruistic?
Finally, if you really want to live cruelty free and 100% sustainably, the only option is to throw yourself off of a bridge because any time you interact with modern society you are producing CO2 indirectly and potentially harming animals, no matter how careful you are.
Furthermore, it’s a bad argument to imply vastly reduced complicity with a system is the same as full complicity.
If Beyond Meat had grown organically, instead of raising hundreds of millions of dollars, it would be a great company doing great things today. Instead, it has failed to live up to the unrealistic expectations that were set for it. Beyond Meat is no different than any of the other zirpicorns.
Here's a comparison - Tyson Foods, best known for their frozen meat, had a revenue of $54.44 billion last year. Their current market cap is $21.77 billion.
Beyond Meat reported an annual revenue of $87.9 million in their 2018 S-1, and post-IPO reached a peak market cap of $14.1 billion.
See the issue with these numbers?
It's not as good as the meat it's comparing itself against, and it's not as good as the vegetarian options also available in the store, and it's more expensive than either.
Anytime can "be the moment" for plant-based meat if the product technology was there, but it's not.
I've tried the beyond burgers, they were alright taste wise, but yeah there's many other options for a protein source.
Beyond Meat was never going to convince people to eat less meat by substituting it for fake burgers and steaks. For people that already eat vegetarian there already tastier sources of protein. Lentils, beans, quinoa, chickpeas, mushrooms, nuts & seeds, etc. All of those have much more flexibility with how you can incorporate them into dishes than a fake slab of "meat."
> more expensive than either.
This is a political problem. In the US animal agriculture receives far more funding than plant-based protein. Without government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would cost closer to $30-$40. We've historically defined food security int he US as "meat and dairy," two of the things we really need to consume less of because of environmental impacts.
But yeah, Beyond Meat wasn't going to get us there. We need real political changes, not fake meat.
I'm sure that's due to depressing subsidies or economies of scale, but regardless of the reason it's kind of hard for me to justify buying something that will taste like a "not-quite-as-good-as-the-thing-half-the-price" burger.
They are pretty good, don't get me wrong, it's just something that I have trouble purchasing.
Based on what data do you make such unsubstantiatable statements?
Also, price is always going to be an issue. The US spends billions and billions of dollars supporting the meat industry. The fact meat is cheap is a political choice, which makes direct plant based substitutes a tough financial proposition.
Then you factor in the costs and it's Beyond insanity.
And frankly I don't know if Beyond was doing anything legitimately novel. Impossible was over-engineering their burger to the extent that I wouldn't eat one from any restaurant because I couldn't tell whether it was be'f or beef. Beyond just seemed to be nu-gardein which I'll grant you—it's a Monsanto subsidiary—but the product is palettable, consistent, and available almost universally and has been as long as I've been on the diet, 12 years.
This of course was completely false, but far too many people let themselves get caught up in hype instead of reason.
---
I remember having an excellent veggie burger at a bar, and then when I went back a year later, it was replaced by Beyond or Impossible, and the bar tender was pretty open about how it was gross but their distributor pushed it on them. That of course pissed off the vegetarians who didn't like meat and had no desire for a meat-like substitute.
Hope this doesn't kill them.
It absolutely is the time for plant-based meat. It has never been more crucial. It's just that their business model was easily replicable.
Sure if we are cherry picking the "premium" brand this comparison works. Store brand soy or oat milk are 0,95€[0] and 0,90€[1] per liter respectively, so about what cow milk costs. For milk and milk alternatives there hasn't been a financial differentiator between them for about 5 years now.
With meat replacement patties there is still a significant price difference, though there Beyond Meat is also one of the more expensive ones (which is bold, as they've also been lapped by the competition in taste and variety of products).
[0]: https://www.rewe.de/shop/p/rewe-bio-vegan-soja-drink-1l/5852... - Links may not work depending on what postcode you enter. Should work with 10115
[1]: https://www.rewe.de/shop/p/rewe-bio-vegan-hafer-drink-ohne-z...
That is the plan?
As a result, the entire packaged food industry is pumping up protein numbers and marketing it as the primary attribute of the food (where they might have previously marketed low fat or low sugar or whatever else in the past).
So, saturated market... but certainly one people are investing in now.
Very fun. The only war on protein I have been a part of is personally removing hundreds of pounds of protein from circulation. By eating it. I think I'm winning.
The whole time they are telling me this I can't help but wonder what the hell is the point of the glp1 here? You still have to improve diet and regularly exercise anyhow. So its like there is no point. Might as well just rip the bandaid off, diet and exercise, get there 6 months slower, while not taking the glp. Like wouldn't you want to actually increase muscle mass while burning fat?
The industry has successfully marketed and packaged meat as "that thing you buy", hiding the immense and unconscionable cruelty which sentient beings are subjected to.
Some are so much into meat the vegetarian evangelism has about as much chance as trying to convince them cannibalism is the solution to all world problems.
If you sell them something cheap that tastes great and tell them it has meat in it there is no need for all that tiresome talking about saving the world on an empty stomach. They become easy to catch and kill.
If they would do a 55/45 beef/plant-based meat blend and burgers, I think adoption rate would pick up significantly. Anybody who questions the taste is going to see that beef is the main ingredient. If the product comes in significantly cheaper than beef alone, more consumers will try it and look to it as an affordable way of eating beef.
For the bigger picture, 65 cows will stretch as far as 100 cows previously did, lowering suffering, environmental damage, inputs, etc.
For the people who like the 55/45 blend, it would open the door to an 80/20 blend plant vs. beef, and a 100% plant-based product.
Also really hard to cook with imo compared to meat. Meat is nice to cook with from all the fat in there. It just renders out perfectly and also separates it from the pan. You get some nice carmelization, maillard reactions, all the nice stuff going on.
The fake meat is like a sponge for grease on the other hand. Nothing renders out. Stuff gets sucked in. It is like being on the opposite side of the osmosis reaction going on here. And boy do you need grease to cook with this stuff. Otherwise it just fuses to the pan like nothing, and again crumbles apart getting it off. It pretty much needs to be pan fried and soaks up a ton of grease after. You therefore can't trust nutrition guidelines because of the grease requirement to get anything out of this stuff. I bet if you air fried it, it would be absurdly dry.
Nothing against mixing beef with plants and the like, but there are far easier ways to improve the welfare of cattle that only costs pennies.
The protein bar could work. I personally don't like them, because most of them are just candy bars with added protein.
Meat substitutes (e.g. fake turkey made of tofu) are generally an inferior good, in both the economic sense and the sense of taste. It's not surprising to me that they don't work. Maybe if they're made much cheaper.
Folks can not like meat for ethical issues but it is a good source of protein and our bodies are designed to eat it. If you don’t want to eat meat there are other good sources of nutrients from a carefully designed vegetarian diet. The whole “fake meat” thing was always just a silly gimmick.
More broadly, as others have highlighted, the result is mostly over-processed lab goo that most health conscious people would avoid. There are plenty of good sources of protein without the need for magic shakes either.
Net here is a business trying to solve problems that aren’t really problems. The stock being down 98.9% is a reflection of that cold reality.
Even if that were true, our bodies were designed in a different era. Long before factory farming and antibiotics, long before curing and flavorings. Yes, high quality meat can be healthy but how many people are eating high quality meat?
If you want to criticize Beyond Meat for being processed goop, you must compare it to the meat regular people are eating every day… which is also processed goop but with added antibiotics and disease. The average American consumer would be much healthier if they immediately swapped all of their meat consumption with plant-based alternatives.
Beyond, Impossible, and the like have suffered from misinformation and an industry-funded, influencer-laden social media smear campaign to paint these alternative products as highly-processed franken-foods.
They are a good alternative for health and environmentally-conscious folks, solve real sustainability challenges, and aren't terrible for you in moderation.
I think this is an example of an idea which looks great in the hype phase, but doesnt translate to real world traction.
Likewise, not all processing is bad. Cooking food is a form of processing and just makes the nutrients much more easy to digest.
the Company requires additional time to complete a review and analysis related to its inventory balances, including amounts recorded for the provision of excess and obsolete inventory
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1655210/000165521026...
Or, in other words, why would you eat mediocre fake meat when good vegan food that doesn't pretend to be meat exists, if your goal is to eat vegan.
People don't eat burgers for health reasons.
> There's already healthy and delicious cuisines that have developed over thousands of years (Indian, Nepalese, I'm sure many others).
Why eat ice cream when chicken is healthier?
You're comparing apples and oranges. Yes, there are plenty of delicious vegetarian foods, but you can't just substitute one for the other. If you're craving eggplants, replacing it with lentils will not satisfy you.
What's to not understand?
The plant meats are healthier than the animal meats.
It will never be the right moment for plant-based meat. It is ultra processed unhealthy garbage.
The length of the ingredient list tells you everything you need to know. The longer it is, the more processed and unhealthy the "food" is.
And also one where animal agriculture is heavily subsidized.
I also am disappointed there was no iteration or improvement of the product over time. There was clearly room to innovate or make it taste better - it feels like the product hit, there was some excitement about the novelty... and then they didn't capitalize on it by pushing new variations and updates.
If I were vegan, I'd cook my own meals because then I'd really know what's in the food I eat.
How big is the market for non-ideological vegans/vegetarians that are shopping for meat alternatives?
Most people are not ideological with their food. Most people will only stop eating meat when it becomes too expensive to afford. Simple as that.
What is the status you gain for being seen eating a beyond burger in 2026?
At something like 6% of the world the market the population of ideological vegetarians and vegans is huge. With another handful of percent who are ideologically opposed to eating meat on certain days but not entirely vegetarian.
PS. Your claim that "most people are not ideologic with their food"... Not all food ideology is related to vegetarianism so it's not terribly relevant but I think this claim is just wrong. Islam + Hinduisim + Buddhism make up nearly half the world and all have pretty strong religious ideological beliefs about food, and a non-trivial fraction of the quarter of the world that is christian has at least a few scruples like avoiding meat during lent. And that's just people preaching religious beliefs not less documented ideologies like believing real men eat their steak raw or whatever.
If you were to make fake plant-based products that were (a) noticeably healthier than meat, and (b) indistinguishable from meat taste-wise (or better-tasting), I'm quite confident a lot of people would pay a premium for that.
The problem is the current products just don't deliver that. All they deliver is eco-friendliness at a premium, at which point they're basically offering something more akin to the optional climate fee on flight tickets.
I like em but I think the idea of them being somehow premium doesn’t translate.
I wasn't vegan or vegetarian at the time and I thought they were just a complete improvement over beef burgers. But I think that thick congealing beef fat is gross and that it's just better mixed with mushroom juice, and I also already liked mushrooms.
Just seemed like just another weird Silicon Valley money bubble built on hype and vc cash instead of any kind of meaningful product differentiation.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s our genuine experience.
Proprietary food, that you can only buy from one company?
Of course it was doomed to fail. It’s not even about veganism, it’s a cancerous idea.
I was going to offer the twinkie but I guess hostess declared bankruptcy, so maybe you're right.
They're both doing fine.
And Huel.
Likewise beyond just substitutes, all specific sodas, sweets, biscuits*, most breakfast cereals, etc.
* I'm British by birth, I don't mean those scones Americans have with "gravy".
Huh? Isn't that most of it, except for basic grocery ingredients?
now they are publicly listed, and their cynical premise has not born fruit
time to pivot!
