- Also available at: https://archive.is/9zixc
The article is worth reading before commenting. The author notes that it is not just about price, taste, and convenience: there are other factors at play, for example that meat fans really love meat.
Personally, while I gladly accept that "meat isotopes" can be a good way to transition some people into a less meaty diet, they just dont do it for me. If I want to eat vegetarian, I cook a meal that was never centered around meat in the first place and that therefore has no gap caused by the absence of meat. And I'm especially suspicious of new entrants to the market who give off Silicon Valley disruptor vibes. This is not rational, I admit, but I feel that a meat producer is more likely to know what they are doing than someone building a "challenger protein" (which is how BM describe themselves). I dont want to be part of someone else's move fast and break things experiment. That doesn't mean meat production is great --it has notorious abuses-- but that just makes me want to reduce consumption, not replace it with an isotope.
- Fully agreed. Mushrooms are a much more appealing meat to me.
- *meat alternative
- Also there are a lot of existing competitors. I like beef as much as anybody (get it from a farmer I know), I like deer meat better (between hunters I know and a network that salvages roadkill I am thinking about getting a better freezer.) I used to be a vegan. I like tofu, I like tempeh, I like Boca Burgers, I like Quorn. I like beans. Dairy farmers in my state think "acid whey" is a waste product they want to be rid of, every sports performance and bodybuilding person I know thinks it is the gold standard for protein supplements.
- It needs to be half the price of the meat version
- Well, it doesn’t taste as good. Fatty gristle rendered into grease is tasty. All this fake meat is like a sponge. It needs an oil to not stick to the pan and actually sear. And then it soaks up this oil. Ends up tasting mostly of whatever oil you used which is no greasy lard thats for sure. Rendered animal fat triggers some deep deep responses in the monkey brain.
- > it demands less of the Earth's resources
That remains to be proven. Most of these substitutes are highly processed and require significant factory apparatus, so what are we gaining by skipping well-understood natural processes of animal husbandry?
> it really tastes nothing like actual meat
Not only that, but its nutritional profile is nothing like actual meat. Basically all of these substitute fake foods (milk, cheese, meats, etc) have significantly different nutrition from what they're purporting to replace. And that is incredibly difficult to account for in meal planning and recipes. Sure, it's fine if there's oat milk in your latte every morning instead of dairy (sort of like drinking your oatmeal anyway) but to swap out meat for highly-processed plant-based stuff is a huge question mark now, because even if you can 1:1 slide it into a recipe, it doesn't serve the same nutritional purpose, vitamins, protein, what have you.
- It doesn’t. I tried a couple of brands (beyond meat and another brand whose name i can’t remember) and it really tastes nothing like actual meat.
- Beyond meat is terrible. Try impossible burgers.
- The Impossible Whopper tastes great to me, but it's just a bit too dry compared to the regular Whopper. The A&W Beyond doesn't suffer from the dryness, but it is much further away from a meat taste than the Impossible is (although it is tasty in its own way).
- Nah, i don’t care. Artificial meat is a dumb idea anyway.
- It’s the worst at all aspects at a higher price.
8 points by miles 1 day ago | 13 comments