Plant-Based Mince Now 29% Cheaper Than Beef at Tesco as Meat Prices Climb
https://vegconomist.com/studies-numbers/plant-based-mince-29-cheaper-beef-tesco-meat-prices-climb/Open linkView original on lemmy.ml683
Comments200https://vegconomist.com/studies-numbers/plant-based-mince-29-cheaper-beef-tesco-meat-prices-climb/Open linkView original on lemmy.ml
Honestly as long as it doesn't taste weird or have a strange texture I don't mind plant based meats
Impossible, at least to me, is functionally indistinguishable from a ground beef patty. Back when I was vegetarian and before I was vegan, I went to Burger King on lunch to try the Impossible Whopper. I wasn't fond of Burger King, but I was mostly curious enough to see what an Impossible Burger tasted like having had Beyond at home once (where Beyond is pretty easily distinguished from ground beef by its flavor).
Walked in, walked out, took a bite in my car. Straight-up almost went back in and asked for a new one before realizing it wouldn't do any ethical good and that I didn't have the time. This was even after seeing that it was in the Impossible-branded wrapper. I decided to go there another time to "try the real one", and it was the same. I was dumbfounded; it was straight-up just a Whopper – having admittedly not eaten a BK burger in a few years at that point. (They also put mayo on it by default without telling you, so good job, BK.)
I had the same experience. I couldn’t tell the difference at all. Wondered if a mistake had been made, but had the same experience the next time. And I’ve had enough people tell me that they can’t tell the difference.
Same! My introduction was that I ordered the "burger" at a gastropub that was a vegan restaurant (unbeknownst to me). It was delicious so I asked the bartender for another and he goes "another veggie burger?" and I said "No I had the meat burger" and he replied "we don't have a meat burger here". My mind was blown! And now I don't buy beef anymore lol
This company did not become gigantic for no reason!
This is actually why I prefer the Beyond to Impossible. Both command a premium, and the Impossible is so indistinguishable that it feels like a waste of money. The Beyond has a great taste, but is not exactly beef flavor. They smell like cat food to me before they're cooked, but I find myself craving the taste now and again because it is something unique.
Yeah, that's super fair. Both have a place. Beyond is something different as a novelty if you already eat meat; I'd liken it to a non-vegan using agave over honey. For vegetarians/vegans, it's nice to have basically a 1:1 if you want it. Even for vegans and vegetarians, it's valid to prefer Beyond over that 1:1 replica. And for non-vegetarians trying to be more climate-conscious or a bit less unhealthy (Impossible is far from healthy – its saturated fat content, for example, is nearly as bad as ground beef's – but it's also less likely to give you colorectal etc. cancer), it's a reasonable choice.
There is absolutely a place for both products. Impossible did exactly what they set out to do in flavor and texture mimicry. It's the one I tried first as a meat eater and that's what got me to try Beyond and a few others.
I hear the complaints about the fat and sodium in the products, and while it sounds less than ideal due a vegan or vegetarian diet, it doesn't sound that bad for an omnivore, especially one that eats less veg. The great thing about them being a manufactured product is both of those things can change through product development. I remember reading that Impossible went through numerous revisions to stand up to Burger King's conveyor belt grill system.
I'm very excited for the future of these types of products.
You kind of know after when you don’t feel as slow or whatever
I feel like the thing is you can hide so much in something like a burger between sauces and other toppings and stuff that it's really the texture and protein that's doing the heavy lifting. Which by the way is no bad thing, if I can't tell the difference anyway then awesome.
I'm sure we're quite a lot further away from having a "naked" cut of meat with minimal seasoning tasting like the real deal, but that also doesn't really matter either. I eat a handful of steaks a year and I probably won't have a veggie steak any time soon, but if 6-8 steaks a year is the only meat I'm still eating in a few years that's a huge step in the right direction
The greatly increased sodium content is a concern for my household, though.
Oh yeah I should probably watch out for that too
Those are older recipes. Always read the ingredients tho.
370 mg per 113 g serving, specifically described as the current recipe from their own site:
https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018939274-What-are-the-nutrition-facts-for-Impossible-Beef-Meat-From-Plants
That's about 5× as much sodium as beef.
My statement was in general with these famous non-animal burgers. To see that, you need to see a trend line over changes over time.
Some are holding onto more sodium. That's on them, but if you think you can do that math on how bad that sodium is vs the rest of the factors, good luck.
impossible Burger's sodium levels haven't changed in at least four years:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/impossible-and-beyond-how-healthy-are-these-meatless-burgers-2019081517448
Oh wait, here's a source from six years ago, still 370 mg:
https://nmrdn.com/the-impossible-truth-about-the-impossible-burger/
Seven, still the same:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/23/an-impossible-burger-dissected/
Apparently there was 30% more sodium at launch, and it was reduced to a whopping 370 mg around 2019:
https://www.businessinsider.com/impossible-veggie-burger-cholesterol-meat-2019-1
So the original formula had over 6× as much sodium as beef. Still very much room for improvement.
Totally. I’m hoping they can get it real close and less expense. Then start the swap out
Same. I tried a Burger King when they had a deal where you could get the regular Whopper and the Beyond (or whatever brand it was, of plant-based meat) Whopper for the price of one, so I figured, taste test. The regular Whopper is your typical trashy fast food burger that is on the better side of decent, without being good. The mayonnaise and ketchup are a bit strong, but between the lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles, it's a well balanced sandwich. I'd like the burger to be thicker, but this is what's keeping it from being a good burger. So then the Beyond one. It tastes burnt, like the most important flavour to emulate was the "char-broiled" feature. Beyond the burnt flavour, it just tastes... bland. They could have seasoned it better, maybe.
I want to believe in plant-based. Not because I want to be a vegan. But because IDGAF about whether it's animal-based or plant-based. I don't think most people should. I have a unique condition (bariatric surgery) where I actually need animal protein. So vegan stuff can't be my main thing, but I can have some of it. But for people who don't actually need animal protein? I wanna see that stuff succeed so much.
Edit: Someone actually beat me to it, and the plant-meat BK uses is Impossible, not Beyond. Still, I disagree with that person — there was a pretty big difference between the two. Maybe Impossible has gotten better over the years?
Yep
If you do the above 2 things and its 29% cheaper than mince, you best believe I'll be eyeing up the plant stuff
I don't really see the point in them though. Why would I buy plant meat to make a not chicken wrap when I could just make a mixed bean wrap.
Some people prefer the meat taste, not a bean taste
Variety.
When burger king launched their plant based whopper, it was legitimately better tasting than their normal beef whopper.
Like so much else, it seems to be a useful innovation predicated on a certain degree of professionalized cultivation and expert engineering. I predict I'm going to enjoy the loss-leading rollout and hate the post-market-saturation enshittification.
When the reverse was true it really rubbed me the wrong way. Soybeans are dirt cheap and soybean meal (the defatted version) even more so. On agricultural markets soybean meal is around 300-400 dollars per metric ton. That means it's traded for less than a dollar per kg. Yet soy based vegan products were for years more expensive than the meat alternative, and lots of these animals would have eaten more than 1kg of soy containing feed to produce each kg of meat. It makes no sense to me. Yes processing the soy meal into a tasty meat alternative is not cheap, obviously, but are you telling me the soy meal to meat conversion is cheaper than the soy meal to faux meat conversion? Really put me off from vegan products.
Same is true for things like oat milk. Oats in bulk cost pretty much nothing yet they managed to sell it for more than cow milk. What am I paying for? Marketing? Corporate profits? And don't bring up the whole "animal proteins are subsidized" bit. I don't know about the US but in the EU the subsidies are based on agricultural area. 1 hectare of soy plantation gets the same amount of subsidies as 1 hectare of any other animal feed crop. That's not the explanation.
I see this as a huge improvement and if plant based products are to really take off they have to be an affordable alternative even to the non vegan.
Soybeans as a commodity can be cheap, but that doesnt mean that an end product made out of soybeans will also inherently be cheap.
The market for soybean based meat alternatives is not that huge, so one of the more expensive aspects of trying to have an end product in an actual brick and mortar store is going to be getting space on the shelf in the first place. Packaging design and maybe some marketing, not to mention creating the actual product itself. All that stuff is expensive even if its mostly soybeans that the end product is made from
Laundry detergent is like 95% water, but it costs far more than if it was actually 100% water
Same. I feel like vegans are being taken advantage of. Soy and oat and other grain based replacements for animal products should be dirt cheap. They're marketing to hipsters and pricing accordingly. So all that shit about the economy and whatnot? Marketing trash. Make that shit cost what it should and way more people would buy it. Especially with everything going up.
Not sure about soy beans, but you can buy a lot of beans very cheaply. Oats are also very cheap.
Processed foods are always going to cost more, and probably suck. Make your own, meat or vegan it's going to be better for you, tastier, or both.
You don't have to buy such products when you are vegan but personally I'd rather be taken advantage of than have non-human animals be taken advantage of and in a much more severe way. People really get thrown off at the slightest inconvenience when it affects them...
Ah yes, the "slight inconvenience" of being poor.
Fair, and expected, but why not both? Why can't vegan food be profitable and also cheaper than animal-based products? Because of greed taking advantage of people with hearts bigger than their wallets but who will open it regardless and just pay more. The one who is more frugal and doesn't have as strict of dietary restrictions sees the bullshit on both sides but buys what's affordable.
I will say this for you vegans... one of you got me curious about oat milk, so I started asking for it at my favourite coffee shop, and I think it makes their coffee better. They push it with new customers, but they serve whole (cow) milk as well. Once I opted for cow milk a couple times, they stopped asking. So I had to mention that I was curious about oat milk. Hoping to push the trend back, where they stop asking me and just do oat milk. I'll buy oat-based creamer if it's cheaper/on sale. I want to give it a try at home now. Not because it's more ethical, but because I found it makes my coffee better.
I like eating meat. I'm not gonna mince words here. But if I found a plant-based alternative I liked and it was cheaper (or comparable), I would get it more, but I have to be careful... because I still need animal protein due to the surgery I got a couple years ago.
Where I live there are little processed vegan options, they are hard to come by/identify, and there are no vegan sections but I'm glad that they are here at all tbh given the state of things. As for prices just like with everything you judge things on a per product basis. If there's something that costs more than I'm willing to pay I just skip it as I'm not forced to buy certain types of products which are generally not healthy anyway. Not that I disagree about pricing being shitty but you just work with what you have since cruelty is so deeply ingrained in our society it inherently requires effort to minimise it. Just like with privacy for example where you actively need to fight for it. It's just something you do. Once my current phone is on death bed I will be buying fairphone which is expensive or a similar product out of the same principle.
Eh, maybe at the beginning when you haven't adjusted and are looking for one to one replacements for meat. After a while though you just get used to beans and lentils, which are dirt cheap, and tofu and eat more of those then the fake meat products.
They want to make money by targeting the smaller market of people with more money. It's marketing strategy, usually tied to "wellness" - which is a super huge market (almost entirely grifters.)
I don't have an emotional attachment to meat. I'd like non-meat stuff to be cheaper, and the real costs of meat to be accounted for.
This. I could go vegan today if the fake meat stuff was more affordable. Right now I'm maybe half of the way there.
It already is... Also consider your health to be a motivator. Meat (especially processed) isn't good for health.
Now in Belgium, a fake chicken meal with 2 fake chicken fillets is <4€
The cheapest chicken fillets at aldi are 6.50 € for 2.
Here real meat has been increasing for years while plant based stays the same. Ground pork is still cheaper though.
The actual chicken fillet is like 1.5x the protein still, but not too bad. My girlfriend is not veggie and I feel financially bad now also when I get meat for her, but she needs very calorie dense foods sometimes because she can't eat a ton.
Beans and lentils are dirt cheap and a great source of protein and fiber.
You might be able to incorporate more lentils and beans. They're dirt-cheap and fill you up similar to meat.
I always get pre-cooked beans, and red lentils are my go-to for lentils, because they cook quickly and don't need pre-soaking for reducing their fartiness.
I do a lot of rice and (canned) beans, which is pretty cheap and satisfying.
I don't have any experience with lentils. My parents never had them because , the story goes, the last time they did my father farted himself out of the bed.
only 29% more expensive is still criminally cheap for meat prices. meat and dairy subsidies have made a western world where i typically need to pay the same or more for a vegggie burger than a meat one.
29% should be more like 70%.
If the meatless option is 29% cheaper, the meat option is .29/(1-.29) = 41% more expensive, not 29%. Meatballs in the article are .41/(1-.41) = 69% more expensive than plantballs, which is close to your target number.
I remember the days when a veggie cheeseburger was a grilled cheese sandwich. Progress.
this math hurt my head, but i thank you
Never too late to get better at anything. I'll give it my best shot, but if it still doesn't make sense, ask an LLM to explain anything that doesn't make sense, and keep digging, and you'll know it inside and out.
Basically, if the price was p currency units and is now 29% off, the price is now p-.29p = (1-.29)p currency units (by the distributive property). The old price is .29p currency units higher than the new price, and as a fraction of the new price, that is .29p/[(1-.29)p] higher. The p's cancel out, so this fraction does not depend on the starting price. Write that fraction as a percent (per 100), and you get your answer.
It's not obvious when looking at it. Numbers can be inconvenient.
Same with alcohol-free beer and other drinks. Somehow they always cost considerably more than regular ones.
They don't make the drink and then pour in rubbing alcohol at the end.
Non-alcoholic versions of drinks cost at least as much to produce (many cost more because they're removing the alcohol at the end of the process), and they're way less popular, so the economies of scale makes the alcoholic versions cheaper per unit.
thing with that is that they actually have to produce those drinks normally and then remove the alcohol, so the process is actually more expensive and labor intensive. at least thats what i heard on the radio one day, im no expert.
You have to feed the yeast enough to make the beer which gets at least a few percent alcohol, otherwise you'd just have porridge.
Don't forget the cross subsidies from co-products.
If ground beef (aka beef mince in the UK where this story is running) is the cheapest trimmings that remain after all of the expensive cuts have been processed, it's entirely possible that the low price for this byproduct is partially subsidized by the high prices for the premium product (expensive steaks, moderate expense whole cuts). Plus things like hides for leather.
For now, the plant-based competition is aiming at the types of meat that are easier to mimic or replace with plant-based foods. And unfortunately, those happen to be the cheaper types of meat. If we get to the point where there is significant plant-based competition to filet mignon, that product will have a lot more room to work with in being price competitive.
Pricing inputs get complicated, and government subsidies are only a piece of the picture.
what you said doesnt negate what i've said. im posing that without the heavy subsidies, we would see a more accurate consumer pricing, that remains true. of course there are other factors involved, that goes without saying.
Not every reply to a comment is intended to do that.
well forgive me, but it seemed like there was a tone of correction happening, my bad.
No worries. I just think pricing dynamics are neat and I wanted to talk about them.
That has been proven to be incorrect: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/meat-subsidies
Removing the subsidies would rise the prices by cents.
Raw food - any food - is dirt cheap. Most of the costs is the chain of logistics (and that every middleman takes their cut).
I like cheap and accessible plant-based alternatives. But this doesn't really sound like that. It's much closer to "now the poor people have to eat weeds lol"
A distinction without a difference. Let's subsidize legumes and plant-based products to the same level animal-based parts are subsidized and see which one is cheaper.
The CPI changes the basket of goods all the time, and I've long suspected the degradation in food quality keeps hitting a lower bar for food processing and quality, which then gets integrated as the permanent price floor as the money supply grows. Margins become too low on anything but shit tier food.
Beyond isn't cheap. It's super expensive. I don't really get the appeal, but I've never really eaten corpses so that's probably why.
Oh waow much edgy
Like calling regular food “weeds”.
Much like how the use of quotes indicates that I am not referring to myself as laughing at the impoverished, I am not referring to myself as calling plant-based food weeds. It is, if you can believe it, a mockery of the wealthy elite.
I like that as the meat industry pushes to prevent plant based food from using certain meat words like "sausage" and "burger" but there will always be other slightly less common words, like "mince" and "hash"
its similar to the catfish organizations who demanded foreign catfish to be marketed as swai or basa because they couldnt compete.
I've never heard of it called mince in the US.
It's more of a British English term than an American English one
In the states, you can buy 4 big blocks of tofu for next to nothing at Costco.
It’s super easy to make (throw some soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice vinegar on small pieces in the toaster oven) and delicious.
Extra form tofu.
taste may be great but for me it’s sometimes the “mouth feel” that gets me with tofu. wish i could fix that. (it’s a me thing)
There's multiple types of tofu with different textures. Silken and soft tofu are different than firm which are different than extra firm
Extra firm tofu, cooked at 375 degrees has a good, solid consistency.
I’ve had squishy tofu and yeah that’s the suck. I don’t make mine that way.
Not all tofu is the same!
Which is great if you live anywhere near a Costco.
Sadly my closest Costco is a two hour drive away. And that's not actually counting any city driving that I'd need to do.
Kroger sells it for like $2.25/pound. It's cheap.
Jesus this is like half what I'm paying at my local supermarket.
$2.59aud / 450g pack at Aldi in Australia.
I also now live about 2.5 hours from the nearest Costco. I still have the membership so i now get a lot of stuff delivered. Check out Costco.com. It might be worth it for you.
I haven't successfully made tofu :(
Idk how but it gets a weird tangy taste when I make it
There's different kinds of tofu.
Try different recipes, you'll find one.
Extra firm tofu, pressed for at least 30 minutes
I'll give it a try!
What are you seasoning it with and are you pressing it / how long are you pressing for?
Extra firm tofu, pressed for at least 30 minutes.
Mix in a bowl
Marinate and cook on a silicon mat 375 for 45 minutes (flip every 15 minutes)
Or
Toaster oven: Silicon cupcake tray with mix and tofu divided by 12, 375 for 20 minutes flip and cook another 20 minutes.
It certainly generates a negative reaction from folks, but it’s just soy beans.
Cooked right, it’s better than any average meat from the grocery store.
No gristle, no pink-in-middle issues, or safe handling required. 🤷🏻♂️
Man I wanted so much to love tofu but it seems that it isn't it for me. They say that tofu is like a blank form that soaks up the flavor of whatever you through at it but for me every time I tried it seems that the flavors is not deep enough or it gets too salty and in any case it kind tastes like plain flour with salt and seasoning. Granted, I am not really good at cooking but solving cooking with throwing seasoning at it is right up my alley. In any case I always try tofu when I see it "in the wild" and always got the same experience. Granted again, never went to a place that is focused on tofu, but had tofu with miso soup for example and stuff like that.
I know it is a me thing, but the way I see online how awesome tofu is described I thought that I would just fucking love it. I still eat it though, but more like to bulk up something else and add a little nutritional variety, but I hoped it could be it's own thing for me.
On a Side not, the silken variety really impressed me, feels like good substitute for cream, mayo or cream cheese to mix with stuff like ground beef and have it less dry almost with a thick sauce.
Firm tofu does a better job of absorbing flavours than the soft kind. The easiest thing you can do is to drop it into a soup with nicely flavoured broth.
When you have something like miso soup where they use soft tofu, they usually cut it very small so the flavour doesn't need to penetrate.
The beyond burgers I just bought are still 15% more expensive than premium chicken or beef burgers. I'm still waiting for the alternative I was promised.
Some people pay extra to not torture animals.
Should be the other way around. People should pay more to eat a tortured animal.
Yeah... on a black market while getting E.coli, Salmonella and tape worms.
I have a hard time believing meat alternatives are more expensive to produce, but I'm open to being educated on the matter. Paying more money to not torture animals sounds noble at the surface level, but is ultimately just another corporate scam if it otherwise has cheaper production costs. I've found recipes online for making meatless burgers which mostly include very basic vegetable ingredients. I'm sure big companies like Beyond and Impossible add a bunch of filler junk to their products though.
And here in the US it seems the prices are going up to keep pace with beef prices. I'd love to have plant based be cheeper. As it is rn I basically never eat meat. Both are too expensive
Lentils, beans, tofu, chickpeas. Much healthier, cheaper.
Sure, but I also want some affordable fake meat.
TVPs are absolutely underrated, it sure takes some learning but after that.. Cheapest ever. (Never boil, always fry with spices and then add a little bit of water/veggie stock/tomato sauce..)
Huh, you fry the dry TVP? Do you then let it simmer in the sauce for as long as one would normally boil it?
I have some steak-like TVP here, which is going to remain dry in the core, unless you really give it its time, so not sure how well it would work with that.
I do also have (pre-)roasted TVP, though, where I assumed, they do that when extruding or something. Maybe they actually throw it into a big pan before shipping... 🤔
I add plenty of oil in the pan and some onions, then add the dry TVP, mix well, add all the spices, let fry until it looks "right" and then I add water/veggie broth or canned tomatoes, depending on what I do. This works with small or smaller texture or "mince-type" or so.
With big, steak-like pieces I do soak them in hot water for like 5 minutes before frying, but never boil.
Will have to play around with it some more, but first experiment was already pretty good. They fry a lot faster than I would've thought and do taste better.
Honestly, I'm most excited about this way of preparing them, though, because boiling them first, then frying them, was always annoying. Like, you'd need to really press out the water and need a really hot pan to be able to seer them. And you'd need a pot and a pan rather than just a pan. And if you didn't wait long enough while boiling, you couldn't really put them back into the water. And so on... 🙂
I'm glad to hear this! It's sure easier and tastier. :)
Not who you're replying to, but there's one recipe with TVP that I like which cooks kind of close to that where you cook the TVP with only a little bit of vegetable broth and all the spices + onions. https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/easy-tvp-tacos/
I love the texture TVP. But you need to mix it with other stuff, other wise it tastes blain. But with the right flavour, like stir fry flavour, it's a great protein filling addition.
I love it in bolognese or lasagna.. Or in tortillas. Or well, anywhere, it's so easy to just add different spices.
My 'secret' ingredient that makes pretty much any tvp or tofu pop is a drop of liquid smoke or smoked paprika.
Those are amazing! Also nutritional yeast is pretty good to add in.
I'll pass on the tofu every time.
To be fair, saying you don’t like tofu is often more about how you’ve had it than tofu itself.
It’s basically a neutral base, so it takes on whatever flavors and textures you give it. If it’s under-seasoned or cooked wrong, it’s bland and kind of unpleasant. But the same is true for a lot of foods. A badly cooked egg can be rubbery or sulfur-heavy, but that doesn’t mean eggs are bad overall.
Tofu just has a higher “skill floor.” You usually need to press it, season it well, and match the type to the dish. Done right, it can be crispy, creamy, chewy, or even meaty depending on how it’s prepared.
I would encourage you to venture out and give it a try. You probably haven’t had tofu prepared in a way you enjoy it yet.”
https://sixhungryfeet.com/16-tofu-recipes-to-convert-a-meat-lover/
Hey, thanks for the link! I'm not a vegan, but I do respect the choice. And I'm always on the lookout for good recipes! Good food is good food.
There's still a lot of other whole plant-based foods to have instead! There are plenty of people on plant-based diets without any tofu
In other words “accept your slop and like it!”
If you think those are slop, I fear you are looking at bad recipes
A plant should have been way cheaper than meat to begin with. Who do they think they're fooling?
This is correct, however:
You need to also take into account that plants are just the primary ingredients and it needs a lot of intermediary steps during manufacturing.
I say this not to say you're incorrect but just to be a more complete picture so it's unassailable
Just of the top of my head here are some possible ideas to explain why not:
I doubt it's just one of those things that is responsible and suspect it's a mix of those and maybe more.
what are you on about? don't you know it's far cheaper to grow a bunch of plants and then feed it to an animal for a long period of time while that animal grows and then harvest that animal for a small portion of the calories it consumed?
Meat and dairy are heavily subsidised
I don't know about your country, but here in Poland "meat subsidies" are targeted at improving animal welfare or insurance (e.g. from avian flu for poultry). I fail to see how it is a problem?
If it is the same process I saw years ago they extract something from vegetables that is what gives blood its color and taste, and that is the the sauce that make it taste like meat, and that process, I guess, is expensive at least in part because plants have very little of this compound.
Fake meat is expensive because greedy capitalists know they can charge more for it, simple as that.
Tell that to BeyondMeat bag holders. -99.10% return in 5 years, the greedy capitalist pigdogs.
Haha I didn't know that, that's sorts funny, rip to them
Or maybe because stupid prols are paying premium and letting themselves get fucked
Agree but if there isn't another option what else can they do
I can chime in here (I work in plant based meat). It should be but it's not. Why... Lots of reasons. But basicly it's split between animal based meat is artificially cheap and plant based meat costs a lot to make. A lot of the costs (for the good brands) are in the flavorings.
It will only be cheap with large economy of scale factories
This image always upsets me. I really don't think Ronnie O'Sullivan deserves this treatment. At least not that I know of.
I don't know who that is.
Instead of trying to switch over to highly processed vegan product that tries to emulate beef or chicken using tons of additives and scientifically engineered flavours and textures .... why not just start eating actual wholesome vegetables and legumes with high protein content like lentils or beans.
If the cost of meat products is starting to match the cost of expensive meat substitutes ... it probably matches the cost of just eating expensive raw vegetables and beans too.
Humans have been eating high protein vegetables for centuries and it is way more healthier for you than whatever factory produced vegetable mash.
When vegans promote a whole food, plant based diet: "I will only switch when there are drop-in meat and dairy replacements"
Ok then I guess we'll develop drop-in meat replacements: "why emulate meat? So processed!"
It's amazing if you're into WFPB, it's one of the healthier diets out there. You're just not the target consumer of these meat replacements. But they're useful for some people to have a better choice. They're usually not unhealthier than the animal-based product they aim to replace (see meta analysis ).
Yep. The NOVA clowns can piss off, vegans were talking about whole foods long before they started the moral panic about UPFs.
Oh I know this one, it's pretty simple. Considering I at least try to give my meals some taste (by adding spices I feel like adding, theres no real skill or logic I use) I do realize that a lot of "western" people don't really know anything past salt and pepper, when it comes to meal preparation. At best maybe drown the food in some basic premade condiment like ketchup, mayo, etc.
So asking people to eat vegetables, just for them to turn around and say they taste bland and aren't worth it, and they don't know how to make it taste good or even try, is not going to get them to ditch meat.
Humans wanna eat stuff that satisfies more than just hunger now, you know that, unless they have absolutely no choice in what they eat. Nobody is gonna eat anything healthy when equally priced alternatives taste better and require less effort.
Salt, pepper, soy sauce, salt and herb mixes, vinegars. Yeah that covers most of it. At least the herbs I grow myself now, sage, garlic and rosemary
Most legumes have always been cheaper than meat
Omg we need this in Argentina
lol what you guys need is a decent government Anna voters who aren’t complete morons
I thought the MAGA clowns were going to import Argentinian beef to lower the prices in the USA? Oh the fuck well. Zero sympathy, you voted for the BS.
MAGA importing beef… to the UK?
You mean donkeys?
"Beyond" products taste good, and they're meat-like but don't really taste like anything that currently exists, whereas everything I've tried from Impossible is pretty much indistinguishable from meat, it's actually kind of wild.
I'm not even vegetarian (one day) but I was able to cut out red meat entirely thanks to these brands.
When Beyond Beef switched from v2 to the v3 (w/ avocado oil), my wife and I tried it and were like, "THERE IT IS! They finally fucked up a good thing, as predicted.."
But after eating v3 for several months and lucking my way back into a box of v2 at Costco, I can firmly say that v2 was kind of shit.
You just have to season your Beyond Burgers now, is all. You didn't have to before. At least we never did.
V2 was awful. And so salty it made my skin tingle.
V3 is like night and day.
Agreed on all counts. I had already tried them all as I wanted to favor plant based meat on an ecological basis, but my daughter became a vegetarian so I been methodically trying everything on the market and Impossible is better in the beef-like category for sure.
I tried the Impossible pre-made burgers at home and they tasted like rubber gloves or something, so we haven't tried them again since. What do you season yours with?
Not the person you replied to, but I season them exactly as I would any other burger and they come out pretty good. I will note that they are picky in how they are cooked (not the actual ground beef isn't), but you can't cook them quite the same. If you overcook them, the texture/taste call off a cliff.
After the various price hikes stuff like Chinese takeout food just stopped making sense for me. Now I just use plant based “nuggets” and use a sweet-and-sour sauce. A lot cheaper and tastes better.
Problem is beef got to expensive to eat anyway. Made it way easier to cut out of the diet. I need this as cheap as chicken and pork.
Don't worry, all animal products will be going up in price a lot as a result of the oil and fertilizer crisis going on now. The real question is if the planting plans are getting shifted to food crops or if there will continue to be more feed crops, which will lead to famines in the poorer parts of the world thanks to how the markets work.
This would in some ways be good for me. I never thought I could kick the fast food addicition but a bit of price increase was all it took and heck that made it easier to waaaayyyy reduce my beef consumption (although some may debate how much the meat was vegetable based). The struggle to limit meat consumption is the thing which made me take vampire characters more seriously. I used to think it was kinda stupid and they should easily not go after humans but then I realize I would be right there going. Yeah animal blood is so bland. yuck. later though it would be. what! eight fifty for a pint of human. forget it.
Let's just say that it wouldn't be the first time that populations who are used to eating a lot of animal products suddenly became healthier.
This is the way... if it takes so many thousands of gallons more water to make real beef, then why should it be cheaper. And if plant based meat is significantly cheaper, and tastes at least almost as good, I'll want to go for it just for budget reasons.
I've been using another "veggie Ground Round" product for ages and ages, or just shredding up and seasoning tofu or other veg protein myself. Always curious to try some new alt, though. :9
After making tofu, something about shredded tofu really saddens me.
What do you mean? Like it's disrespectful to the tofu?
Yeah. So much work to turn soybean cream into a solid block, and then people turn that beautiful block into tiny bits.
My shredded tofu wouldn't work without that block, so I appreciate it even if it's not visible in the final dish.
I think Quorn has been cheaper than meat for ages. But then it doesn't taste as good, so I stopped buying it years ago.
The Beyond stuff is way more than beef costs. £4 for 250g vs £2.69 for the same amount of meat. And that's the 5% fat beef as well.
The bolognese sauce costs me more than the meat in any case, not to mention the gargantuan amount of cheese we put on lasagne.
You shouldn't be paying that much for Bolognese sauce, it is cheap to make and tastes better.
Supermarket brand sauce is like 70p, but it tastes shit. And tbh, the good stuff is 3 quid, and it's worth paying that over chopping and stirring stuff for an hour.
Bro how expensive are tomatoes in the UK for bolognese to be that much more expensive than the meat to put in it?
Quorn bolognese for me this week then!
lol fucking where??? Im in a major city in Canada and a lb of beyond or impossible is like $10+ An impossible whopper has come down in price but it’s still more expensive than a regular. Thats always been the issue with plant based beef, even though it’s made of soy, it costs me double what beef does, so I don’t blame poor people avoiding it
In Tesco apparently.
it doesnt cost double, youre just being charged double. the prices only make sense due to the colossal subsidies from the animal agriculture lobbies
Briefly, Beyond Burger burger patties were cheaper in a (U.S.) Costco than the equivalent Morton's patties.
It got me to try their v3 forumula... and its actually really good. You have to grill the snot out of it, but it's good.
Beyond Meat is at the point where carnivores won't notice unless you point it out to them.
Which is one of the reasons a lot of vegetarians I know don't like it, it tastes like they remember meat tasting and grosses them out.
I think the latter paragraph is too generalized. As a vegan I'm delighted if I find a product that tastes like I remember my favourite meat dishes tasted.
Nostalgia is a hell of a thing and it applies to food too. I went veg a few years back and sometimes I want that texture and flavor a cheeseburger provides and beyond or impossible patty hits the mark close enough. I think it really lowers the barriers to entry for that kind of dietary restriction. Now if I could find a good substitute for bacon I'd be in heaven but everything I've tried tases like cardboard or like those stale beacon bits.
Yeah, no, I refuse to eat anything that has "versions" and my diet is limiting consumption of anything that needs a formula to make. Those are not indicators of food fit for human consumption.
(Before someone calls me names, I'm on plant-based)
They're specifically trying to emulate food people know (like burger patties). In that context, I think versioning makes sense: "this is our 1st attempt, our second is closer, our third is..."
And it's something you buy if you specifically want emulation.
You aren't wrong: direct, less processed diets are better. I'm just saying that this food is for a more narrow purpose.
Unfortunately, I'm allergic to nickel and most vegetarian protein sources give me issues. I don't eat beef very often anyways, but as someone who was a lite-vegetarian for a while, it bums me out that I had to change my diet to eat more meat/animal products.
I've started making my own tofu "mince" by shredding a block of tofu into a big cast iron pan with oil and lots of seasonings. Get it real hot--you want that Maillard reaction to give it a chewy "crust."
It does not taste like meat, but imho it's better than anything I've found off the shelf.
Unfortunately I can't eat tofu. I love it though.
Perhaps also Mycoprotein like what they use for Quorn products (though other ingredients around it might pose issues)? One study put it at a similar nickle content to egg whites (<6 μg/100 g) see table 4
I've read that Seitan might be better for low nickle because of the refinement compared to regular wheat products. I couldn't verify that for sure
Maybe non-animal whey and non-animal egg white products would be worth trying? They use precision fermentation to make them. I should not these are biologically identical so allergies to the animal based versions of those proteins will still likely apply here. There are more of those coming down the pipeline as well
EDIT: also quinoa too might be lower in nickle from what I'm reading?
I predicted this a few years ago while at the same time saying "I hope I am being a pessimist". I really didn't want this to be how plant based meat alternatives became more popular.
It's always been cheaper than the actual meat. It'd be weird if it wasn't.
it most often isnt, and it IS weird. pretty simple tho, its just bc of subsidies to dairy and meat
That has been proven to be incorrect: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/meat-subsidies
Removing the subsidies would rise the prices by cents.
Raw food - any food - is dirt cheap. Most of the costs is the chain of logistics (and that every middleman takes their cut).
I like beyond beef burgers, local doesn’t sell mince yet sadly. I’m 100% up for using meat alternatives for environmental reasonings alone, the price would just be extra.
Fine, I'll try it if I see it on the shelf.
I mean beyond meat production process is famously industrial and complex; there's even South Park episode on it where Cartman agrees to eat it because it's the same unhealthy factory made slop that he's used to.
Now, for the beyond meat oil use. They apparently dropped refined coconut and canola oil in favour of avocado oil. And oh boy, avocado oil production is almost as bad as if Nestle owned all of it, but at least it should be healthier than coconut/canola mix, right? And then most avocado oil is fraudulent soybean/sunflower/other mixes.
And then there's also avocado oil deforestation/water use etc.
My points are:
Beyond Meat is slop; let's not switch processed cold cuts for a sludge.
you're better off (health-wise and climate wise) making different bean patties (chop 'em, freeze 'em, shape 'em, cook 'em) and lowering your red meat intake than switching to beyond meat.
The process around meat is no less industrial either. Whole food plant-based diets come out ahead health wise of course, but the research comparing animal meats to beyond show beyond coming out ahead for health
In terms of environmental effects, processing is not a major factor at all. It's hardly a minor one either
[...]
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
No.
She bases that information on LCA. LCAs are bullshit:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016724002511
Tldr; they are self reported, aggregate data globally and treats the whole globe uniformly, instead of looking at local qualities; and Beyond Meat conviviently for them does not provide even that data for it's whole supply chain. That means for example that the total carbon footprint of beef of worst industrial farms is applied across all beef produce, even though industrial farms deliver only about 13% of beef worldwide.
Generally I recommend the linked article, they explain why Beyond Meat and similar are just wasting your time at best, or sinister capitalist trick at worst.
Again, the way forward is:
and interim is switching feedlot farming and similar to
Almost all global meat production happens in factory farms. Especially in developed countries with the highest meat consumption. I will look at the US for an example:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates
Even if those other methods could magically do much better, which I significantly doubt given the history of those kinds of methods over promising and under delivering, it does relatively little good to look at any other method because they do not come close to scaling to the level of consumption we're seeing here. A pasture only system could at most come to a small fraction of production. Using 100% of the land, which would create huge deforestation pressures
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
EDIT: It's also worth noting that a lot of people that start on things like beyond and impossible end up eventually switching to much more whole plant-based foods in the end anyways. It allow a lot more easy room to bridge to whole foods than starting with just 100% whole food is for a lot of people
Cool. As the authors of the study I linked wrote, with sources, global stat is <13%.
Example: dairy, 1 liter of milk requires - depending on the method and location -between 19L of freshwater (section 5.2) to almost 3000L, median 196. In USA it starts at ~700L.
Interestingly average poultry requires less land than average pulses. And there's this gem from section 5.2 (again, the linked document has further sources) further explaining why LCA or applying US averages globally is wrong.
Same study, point 4.1.
5.1 and 5.3 why Beyond Meat and similar are over promising and under delivering, with already established examples that show that the substitutes did not decrease meat/dairy consumptions but added to the total consumption.
Citation needed.
I think this is my last post in the thread (and I guess yours too, we seem to exhaust the topic between us).
To sum it up:
we agree on whole plant based diet being the goal
we disagree on the interim diet and how to encourage and enable the transition from current meat-based diets
the hayek paper uncritically cites poore-nemecek 2018. I don't believe they are practicing good science here, either
what a thread to hold on to.
leave me alone
What’s the carbon footprint of BM? I remember being told it was very high, but hard to find numbers.
Not sure what you mean by BM (I assume Beyond Meat?), but every single plant-based food comes out insanely far ahead from animal based foods
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
Fantastic, thank you for the update. And yes I did mean beyond meat. I happen to think it’s super tasty.
Ew, plant based meat
If you want to go vegan/vegetarian just do yourself a favor and learn how to cook vegetables
South asia and southeast asia have a lot of really good vegetarian recipes
Certainly better than these "meat" at least
ew? its just plants prepared in familiar form factors and flavor profiles. let people enjoy plants the way they want.
Highly processed foods are actually quite bad for human nutrition, the more processed they are the worst.
That's not specifically a problem for meat substitutes.
I expect that when you're trying to make plants taste and feel like meat there's a lot of processing involved as well as a lot of funnily named additives which might or not fall (or latter been discovered as falling) into to the "possibly carcinogenic" category.
Maybe that's were the previous poster is coming from: best just eat good vegetarian food that's enjoyable on its own merits than go for highly processed food loaded with additives to try and emulate meat's flavor profile and texture.
i understand all those generalizations, and i dont take issue with any of them. Im not like super upset at them or anything, just replying to the energy i was picking up. No hate, just wish people would chill about telling other vegans/vegetarians how to eat.
I will agree that aiming for a meat substitute is meh, but I will argue that it is a good stepping stone and also texture variety is nice. not that most plant based meat have good texture tho lol