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.
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.
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.
I haven’t successfully made tofu :(
Idk how but it gets a weird tangy taste when I make it
Extra firm tofu, pressed for at least 30 minutes
- cut into 12 pieces
- place into silicon cupcake tray
- add 1-2 tablespoons of soy sauce
- air fryer at 375 for 20 minutes
- flip tofu cubes
- another 375 for 20 minutes
I’ll give it a try!
There’s different kinds of tofu.
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
- 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
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.
Tofu is always terrible in my opinion. You probably did nothing wrong.
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. 🤷🏻♂️
Try different recipes, you’ll find one.
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)
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!
There’s multiple types of tofu with different textures. Silken and soft tofu are different than firm which are different than extra firm
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.
Extra form tofu.
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.
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%.
meat and dairy subsidies
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).
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.
what you said doesnt negate what i’ve said.
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.
Same with alcohol-free beer and other drinks. Somehow they always cost considerably more than regular ones.
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.
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.
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
It’s not obvious when looking at it. Numbers can be inconvenient.
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 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
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 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
For most foods — and particularly the largest emitters — most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green) and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers — both organic (“manure management”) and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods.
[…]
Not just transport, but all processes in the supply chain after the food left the farm – processing, transport, retail and packaging – mostly account for a small share of emissions.
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:
Whole food plant-based diets
and interim is switching feedlot farming and similar to
Furthermore, framing animals as unilaterally less efficient than plants assumes that neither animal production systems nor meat consumption habits can be pushed in more sustainable directions. However, abundant options to make animal-sourced foods more sustainable could be explored, including agro-pastoral, agro-silvo-pastoral (mixed crop-livestock-forest), and regenerative agriculture systems (Costa et al., 2018).
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:
Currently, ‘grass-finished’ beef accounts for less than 1% of the current US supply
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present. By species, we estimate that 70.4% of cows, 98.3% of pigs, 99.8% of turkeys, 98.2% of chickens raised for eggs, and over 99.9% of chickens raised for meat are living in factory farms. Based on the confinement and living conditions of farmed fish, we estimate that virtually all US fish farms are suitably described as factory farms, though there is limited data on fish farm conditions and no standardized definition.[1] Land animal figures use data from the USDA Census of Agriculture[2] and EPA definitions of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.[3]
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
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
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
I will look at the US for an example By species, we estimate that 70.4% of cows
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.
99.8% of turkeys, 98.2% of chickens raised for eggs, and over 99.9% of chickens raised for meat are
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.
As another example, that the lowest 10 percentile footprint dairy farms have lower greenhouse gas equivalent emissions than the 90th percentile soy, nut, and oat farm
Using 100% of the land, which would create huge deforestation pressures
Same study, point 4.1.
which I significantly doubt given the history of those kinds of methods over promising and under delivering
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.
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.
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
-
-
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.
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
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy. https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Fantastic, thank you for the update. And yes I did mean beyond meat. I happen to think it’s super tasty.
Quorn bolognese for me this week then!
Honestly as long as it doesn’t taste weird or have a strange texture I don’t mind plant based meats
Totally. I’m hoping they can get it real close and less expense. Then start the swap out
The greatly increased sodium content is a concern for my household, though.
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:
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:
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.
Oh yeah I should probably watch out for that too
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.)
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.
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
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?
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.
Variety.
Some people prefer the meat taste, not a bean taste
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.
Genuinely I might end up going vegan for mostly financial reasons
Vegetarian but when I don’t have my kids I’m kinda already there. It’s so good for your heart health as well btw. There’s no where for your fibre intake to go but up. I would suggest talk to a nutritionist though because you will very likely need a supplement or two there are some vitamins/minerals that are just hard to get from vegetable sources at the volume you get from meat.
There’s some good vegan recipe communities here on lemmy if you want some inspiration
And 90% of them tend to be shit that tastes or looks good.
I have some ugly, tasteless tofu ready instead. Now to figure out how to season it to make it edible without overdosing on it.
And I still had to include 4 eggs. It’s more ethical than eating the animal itself, but still…
I love vegetarian food but they can pull eggs and dairy from my cold dead hands. I will never give either of those up ever.
Ironically, I hate eggs, unless they are like Pancakes or cakes, I love cheese/milk, but I cannot live without Vitamin B12, and I feel reinforced defeats the point. There’s some unstable ones from microorganisms on certain mushrooms. You can’t predict if it is present or not, which is a problem.
I secretly tried to go full vegan, though I would be open to eating meat and such, I didn’t want to DEPEND on anything that walks, I wanted vegeterian to be the food basis.
I also do thing it is a good practice to practice non-harm (issue with the animals themselves, I do NOT enjoy knowing something has to die or be exploited for me to eat, I do not want to live that way), but I also want to get away with it by using fake meat like Tofu, without doing the whole “I’m vegan you fucking carno-murderhobos!”. I want to pretend to be a carno, I’d also eat roadkill, so long as I don’t depend on it (it is more about resources and safety than purely ethics, ethics too though).
Had to reread that like 5 times to realize you were not saying that you thought those were bad recipes
That’s 90% of the problem. People can’t read, get upset, bring on the mob, torches, and pitchforks.
I say shit anyway.
Thanccs :3
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.
The beyond burgers I just bougjt 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.
I like that as the meat industry pushes to prevent plant based food from using certain meat words like “sausage” and “burger” 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
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.
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”.
