I don't understand the point of "fake meat" burgers. Like, there are so many good recipes and ingredients out there that don't try to mimic meat and are still good and tasty. Look at Indian food, for instance. They sure found a way to make pulses and other humble ingredients tasty and delicious. Or the many Mediterranean dishes that just happen to be vegan or vegetarian, but are meatless because they simply were good enough like that.
I think fake meat wasn't really about "getting people to eat less meat", it was based on the expectation that the average person only wants to eat the same exact thing they ever did without ever widening their culinary horizons. The only problem is, that a person that's open enough to try fake meat is probably open minded enough to try new things in general, including foods that aren't served between two slices of bread.
The people that stubbornly refuse to vary their diets often won't try new stuff anyway
I agree. If you want to eat meat, fine. If you don’t want to eat meat, fine. But the whole, “Let’s trick our taste buds and eat fake meat,” thing doesn’t make much sense to me.
Man it works for me. I love fake sausage more than the real thing because it trips all the same taste feels but I'm not eating something as smart as my dog. It's also less greasy and easier to clean up after I'm done cooking it. I guest that it's ultra-processed, and probably not that good for me, but honestly sausage is pretty damned processed too.
Say you're on the road with a vegetarian and the only place to stop is a fast food burger place. If that fast food place has a fake meat burger on the menu then they'll get a sale from the vegetarian.
I used to just get the "veggie whopper" i.e. all of the fixings, but no pattie at all. There were enough bread, mayo, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese that I got plenty of calories and felt full.
Food is important. Most people don't want to stop eating all the dishes they enjoy and just switch to Indian food. People lie on a spectrum of openness to new things. Developing a high quality direct alternative to a foundational yet highly fraught ingredient of the American diet makes sense to me. Even a bit less beef mitigates the near daily amputations by workers at processing plants or horrors we are adding to with climate annihilation.
Personally, Impossible and Beyond materially improved my life by adding to it. I enjoy their products, and still make plenty of Indian food.
I like indian food. I like a good black bean burger. I also like real meat and fake meat. I wouldn’t mind eating less real meat if the fake meat was even closer and offered more pervasively.
Not everyone likes Indian food. I think most people like familiar flavors. Western people didn't grow up eating veggie-based food so I don't know why this is surprising. People just want to eat familiar things.
What I've noticed, especially from visiting Singapore, is that Indian (and other South Asian) religious vegetarianism often involves finding great alternatives to meat, while Chinese religious vegetarian often involves finding imitations of meat. Both of these habits are rather strong culturally and it would probably feel kind of weird to Indian vegetarians to eat mock meat, or to Chinese vegetarians not to eat mock meat.
The big (well, it's all relative!) mock meat store in Oakland, California, is in Chinatown and their staff and clientele are mostly Chinese, and their products are mostly from Chinese-speaking regions and companies. They have dozens of highly specific mock meats so that people can avoid the religious violations associated with eating meat, while continuing to have specific dishes that they're familiar with.
I personally started out with aesthetic vegetarianism before getting into ethical vegetarianism; that means I disliked meat itself at first, so I usually haven't been excited for mock meat and sometimes have been grossed out by it. But I have a good friend who started out with ethical vegetarianism and has never gotten into aesthetic vegetarianism; he loved meat but came to feel that it was rather harmful and didn't want to be responsible for its production. He has been trying every single kind of mock meat that he can find ever since going vegetarian and has made many of them staple parts of his diet.
I doubt that there's a single way to bridge this cultural gap or resolve it decisively in favor of one tradition or the other.
I totally agree that cultures that have a native tradition of vegetarianism (Indian, Ethiopian, Eastern Orthodox Christian) have tended to come up with awesome stuff that's not based on meat at all. However, people going vegetarian from a non-vegetarian cultural and culinary background don't necessarily want to change their entire cuisine and palate as a result. For many of them, that means mock meats are an extremely appealing option!
Well presumably those other cuisines took a long time to develop the good recipes you mention.
It’s not really biologically normal for humans to just up and completely change their culture based on logic. So while Indians have already done the intergenerational work to have good vegan dishes, in the west we don’t have that. Making a drop in replacement that works within the existing food culture does seem like a reasonable hack.
I'd say that proportion of what you might call "vegan" food in india is quite small. Dairy-based products are everywhere in vegetarian dishes, and many (too many, imho) recipes treat paneer as the default stand-in for meat.
About 10 years ago I became more aware that reducing my consumption of meat was good for the world. The was good for Beyond Meat’s prospects.
About 5 years ago I became more aware that reducing my consumption of ultra processed food was good for me. This was very bad for Beyond Meat’s prospects.
Beyond developed a novelty product that focused entirely on the aesthetics of meat. But let's be real. Their products taste like crap and them scaling up with that awful recipe was never going to work.
The reaper is coming for Impossible soon, but at least in the tiniest possible way, they at least kinda taste like meat.
Regardless, this whole industry is built on hype. It's never going to be cheaper, healthier, or tastier than just a simple black bean burger.
> But let's be real. Their products taste like crap
That's actually being quite subjective rather than real. I personally love their sausage products and choose it over swine 100% of the time. Same with my kids.
They always struck me as a weird niche, as vegetarian food for non-vegetarians.
Most vegetarians I know don't touch "fake meat" because the appearance of it being "real" is enough to put them off of it, the value prop is actually a negative to that market, so you're left with an addressable market of trying to convince non-vegetarians that the ultra processed tofu and/or fungus patty that looks like a hamburger is as good as a hamburger, and as accomodating as I can be, it's just not.
> because the appearance of it being "real" is enough to put them off
Exactly the reason for me. I will go out of my way not to eat these 'lets-try-really-hard-to-be-meat' burgers. That means standard veggies burgers (the ones that most people complain about, which I have no problem with) and even salads if need be.
After a while (long while) being vegetarian becomes psychological and the mere thought of consuming meat turns my stomach.
One commentator in that discussion pointed out Beyond Meat has not actually declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (It just may or may not be true that Beyond Meat is "headed" there, leading the commenter to complain "This isn't a news article, it's an opinion from some journalist who thinks Beyond Meat is doomed...")
I don't understand the business case for fake meat. Surely it has to be really niche once the novelty has worn off. The market would seem to be meat for people who don't like meat? Isn't that like making sex bots in the gender people aren't attracted to for people who aren't attracted to that gender. And its all highly processed so people who like more "natural" foods aren't going to be that interested.
Surely people who are interested in eating less or no meat would prefer to eat briam or ratatouille than some weird textured protein burger. It's not like the burger is the peak of culinary sophistication.
People that don't eat meat socialize with people who do. They go to burger places, they go to Chili's or Outback, they go to cook-outs. Chili's does not serve briam.
Just checked out the menu (I don't eat there), but Chili's do a veggie black bean burger [0], so they are obviously trying to cater to veggies. I would get that.
I assumed it came from investors trying to get out in front of a coming trend that didn't happen, or didn't happen yet.
There's a desire by part of the population, including some people who are influential in the culture and politics, to ban meat or make it prohibitively expensive, in order to reduce the load livestock puts on land and other resources. So if you believed that push was going to reach a tipping point in the next few years, where a lot of people who like meat were about to find that real burgers and steaks were out of their budget, you might think it's a great time to get into the fake meat business and be ready to serve that market.
That didn't happen, but I can see why someone might have thought it was going to, or might think it still will.
The stock spent over a year in the $100-200 range, implying that this was a 5-10B company. I was dumb enough to buy it then. Then it just fell off a cliff and never recovered.
Does anyone specifically know what went wrong? Why was it ever thought to be such a good business and what happened to make it effectively worthless now?
They not only have to compete against direct competitors such as Impossible Burger, but tofu, seitan, and an array of already-established meat-substitute products. Which perhaps don't mimic meat quite as well as the new products, but are typically less expensive. The new products just cost too much for everyday use.
Yeah it's not like burgers have the monopoly of delicious food. There are so many good foods out there, people have been eating mostly plant based foods in both the Mediterranean and India for thousands of years. There are literally thousands of recipes from multiple cuisines around the world that don't have meat in them
> people have been eating mostly plant based foods in both the Mediterranean and India for thousands of years.
Since when have people of the mediterranean and indian been "mostly plant based" for thousands of years? Most indians eat meat ( and the percentage is increasing as indians become wealthier and can afford meat ). Most people throughout the mediterranean eat meat. Why is it that the vegan community goes out of their way to fetishize cultures and lie about them relentlessly? Just because greeks eat salad doesn't mean they are "mostly plant based".
A. I'm neither vegan nor vegetarian
B. I don't mean _now_, I mean in the previous few centuries. People in Italy, Greece, ... couldn't afford to eat meat more than a few times a year (if they were lucky), and mostly ate vegetables, a bit of cheese, lots of bread, pulses and porridge. This is why most recipes aren't really focused on "good" cuts of meat, but mince, offal, bad cuts, .. and lots of vegetables. My grandma was born a peasant in the 1920's and literally ate meat for Christmas and that was it.
As you said because they couldn't afford it, not because the alternative was tastier. When people get richer they start eating meat because it tastes good and has great nutritional value.
Some people want to have the good of meat such as taste and nutrition value without all the bad such as animal cruelty and carbon emissions. What's so hard to understand about that?
If this were the case, we would have stopped eating those dishes. But we didn't, we still make eggplant parmesan, pasta and beans, pasta al pomodoro, pizza marinara, bean soup, minestrone, ...
My point was that you _don't need_ stuff to taste like meat in order for them to be good. People couldn't afford meat so they had to invent tasty food without it, and they largely succeeded at that. Meat got so popular and common not only because it tastes great, but because it's easy to prepare and was associated to a higher status compared to more humble dishes. Several food historians theorised that the birth of many Italian-American dishes can be explained with the extreme poverty most emigrants were escaping from. people got euphoric from finally being able to afford all of the meat they wanted, so they started putting it everywhere just because they could.
The problem is that for too many people having meat is a necessary condition for something to be tasty, which isn't the case. And no, fake meat doesn't really taste like meat unless you haven't ever had meat before. It tastes good, but definitely not like meat. There are other traditionally vegan things that taste way better to be honest.
> great nutritional value
as a meat eater, this is somewhat debatable tbh. Sure meat contains lots of protein, but you can easily get it from other sources both plant and animal based (like eggs, for instance). Red meat is also pretty unhealthy, too; I eat it because it's tasty and convenient, not for the nutritional value it provides.
Easy is definitely a big part of it. It's not impossible to make tasty and nutritious food without meat, it's just not as easy. Especially if you don't use any animal products at all. From an environmental and ethical point of view those don't really differ that much anyway.
Fake meat doesn't really taste like real meat yet, which is one reason why they aren't selling as well as hoped. I think it will be easier to develop fake meats which are indistinguishable from the real thing than convincing the majority of the people to forgo meat without having an equivalent replacement available. Making really really good fake meat is going to be extremely hard, making the majority of people vegan (or even significantly reduce their animal product consumption) without it will be borderline impossible.
> It's not impossible to make tasty and nutritious food without meat, it's just not as easy
I respectfully disagree: while vegan cooking isn’t common for most of us, when you get used to it it’s not harder to cooking delicious and nutritious dishes. It’s also probably easier sanitary-wise.
Just to cite a few:
- mushrooms sauté
- tempeh cubes in broth or sauce
- dal
And yet you go around using terms like "plant based food" and push a "plant based" narrative? Sure.
> I don't mean _now_
Neither did I. That's why I asked "Since when have people of the mediterranean and indian been "mostly plant based" for thousands of years?" The answer is never.
> People in Italy, Greece, ... couldn't afford to eat meat more than a few times a year (if they were lucky)
This is a flat out lie. They couldn't afford the choicest cuts but they ate meat and they certainly weren't plant-based. Just because people eat prime roasts once or twice a year doesn't mean that the american diet is plant based. You are being intentionally and purposefully deceptive.
> This is why most recipes aren't really focused on "good" cuts of meat, but mince, offal, bad cuts, .. and lots of vegetables.
What you described isn't a "planted based diet". "Bad" cuts of meat, offal, etc aren't "plant-based". Cheese isn't plant-based. Neither is milk or eggs or anything.
> My grandma was born a peasant in the 1920's and literally ate meat for Christmas and that was it.
Right. A peasant without access to chickens, pigs, etc? So your grannie ate a plant-based diet? Is that what you are telling me?
You do realize that you aren't special. Most people are from peasant stock. None of them were plant-based or mostly plant-based. Your argument went from plant-based to my granny only ate "prime roast" on chistmas. But you for sure aren't vegan or vegetarian. Absolutely not.
> And yet you go around using terms like "plant based food" and push a "plant based" narrative? Sure.
What else would you call food that comes from plants? That's the technical term. I refuse to call my traditional foods "vegan food" because they are not.
> This is a flat out lie. They couldn't afford the choicest cuts but they ate meat and they certainly weren't plant-based.
My grandma was born in 1922 in Northern Italy. She ate meat once a year. She was neither poor nor rich. That's just what peasants could afford back then. Same for my other grandparents. There's even an old aphorism from a XIX century Roman poet that described a guy that ate two chicken a year as "rich".
> What you described isn't a "planted based diet". "Bad" cuts of meat, offal, etc aren't "plant-based". Cheese isn't plant-based. Neither is milk or eggs or anything.
People back then ate whatever they could grow in their garden, salt cod once a year if their landlord gifted them one, beef basically never (and if any, shortrib or bad cuts, boiled). What would you call a diet where you eat meat twice a year? You can't rely on it for nutrition, you need to get most of your nutrients elsewhere. Pulses, grains, vegetables if you're lucky. They had cheese, too, but it was crazy expensive, so it had to be used sparingly - basically like you'd use a spice.
> Right. A peasant without access to chickens, pigs, etc? So your grannie ate a plant-based diet? Is that what you are telling me?
Are you American perhaps? because I think you don't really understand how crazy poor most of Europe was before WWII. Of course they had chicken, but they were for eggs. They sold the male chicks and all of the eggs. they ate boiled hen when one died or got too old, and that was it.
People back then didn't usually own the land - they rented both the house and the land from a landlord and repaid him back through their work. 3 of my grandparents grew up in the '30s in such a household; the fourth ate meat every once in a while (like 4 times a year) because his father owned a small plot of land - and he was among the richest people in his tiny hamlet! Still due to being the seventh child he kinda had to make do with what he had. They slaughtered pigs to make salami and similar stuff once a year in November, one per family. My grandma fondly remembered how they ate one slice per person per week (she had 8 siblings), and how special that occasion felt. Still not very relevant on her overall nutrition.
> You do realize that you aren't special
I am well aware of how ordinary I am, you don't have to remind me. I can't do much except telling the tales that were told me by my relatives that lived through all that.
> None of them were plant-based or mostly plant-based
Again, how would you call a diet where 99% of nutrition comes from plants? My argument was that people had to do what they could to make the vegetables they had tasty without relying on expensive meat products.
> Your argument went from plant-based to my granny only ate "prime roast" on chistmas.
My argument is clear: people back then had to find ways to make bread, vegetables, pulses and porridge tasty without meat. The proof is both "people telling me that in person" and "open a recipe book from Italy/Greece/Turkey/whatever". There are still nowadays hundreds of recipes that don't involve animal products, or where animal products are a later addition. Every family had one.
Also granny didn't eat prime roast on christmas. She ate an old chicken, boiled. Maybe some boiled rump too (for soup)
It's you that decided to get all confrontational and cast doubts on my personal account of what old people told me and my culture, tbh.
> But you for sure aren't vegan or vegetarian. Absolutely not.
I ate yogurt for breakfast this morning and I just took pork chops out from the freezer for dinner. I'm pretty sure that kind of makes me not vegan.
> What else would you call food that comes from plants?
Vegetables? I don't know.
> My grandma was born in 1922 in Northern Italy. She ate meat once a year.
Oh so I can safely say you are lying. No fish. No pork. No chicken. No sausages, cold cuts, etc? Also, are you talking about ww2? Are you that sneaky that you equate that abnormal period in time with normality? When the war ended, did she still eat meat once a year? Or is it twice?
> What would you call a diet where you eat meat twice a year?
I thought she only ate meat once a year? Now you are boosting it to twice a year?
> Again, how would you call a diet where 99% of nutrition comes from plants?
If 99% of a human diet came from plants, they would die without supplements. No european diet, even during ww2, was 99% from plants. Is your grandma a herbivore? Is she a cow.
> It's you that decided to get all confrontational and cast doubts on my personal account of what old people told me and my culture, tbh.
What they told you about life in ww2? Or northern italian culture? Stop being so deceptive. Stop extrapolating ww2 to thousand years of history.
> I'm pretty sure that kind of makes me not vegan.
You may not be a vegan ( assuming you are not lying about the pork chops ), but you are lying about european diet. Especially northern italian diet. It certainly wasn't 99% vegetables for thousands of years. It certainly wasn't even 99% vegetables during the war torn era of ww2.
Tbh, I imagine it's more the taste failure then anything. I'm an avid impossible burger eater and beyond meat beef tastes not good at all. Impossible is actually somewhere in the ballpark
I think fake meat wasn't really about "getting people to eat less meat", it was based on the expectation that the average person only wants to eat the same exact thing they ever did without ever widening their culinary horizons. The only problem is, that a person that's open enough to try fake meat is probably open minded enough to try new things in general, including foods that aren't served between two slices of bread.
The people that stubbornly refuse to vary their diets often won't try new stuff anyway