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.
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%.
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.
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.
A plant should have been way cheaper than meat to begin with. Who do they think they’re fooling?
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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
I agree with you, for the most part. Fresh veggie stir fry beats beyond burger any day
Food imitation is a brand new field of science developed only within the last 15 years or so. It is incredible that its as close as it is already. And frankly, the share of the population to go vegetarian has never budged before the introduction of these products. Them getting better and cheaper is pretty much the only thing that could move the needle at this point.
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.
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.
…impossible still decisively wins as a ground beef analog, but beyond takes the crown for sausage + nuggets in similar fashion…
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?
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
This image always upsets me. I really don’t think Ronnie O’Sullivan deserves this treatment. At least not that I know of.
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
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”
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.
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”.
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.
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
Thanccs :3
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.
Honestly as long as it doesn’t taste weird or have a strange texture I don’t mind plant based meats
When burger king launched their plant based whopper, it was legitimately better tasting than their normal beef whopper.
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.
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.
Oh yeah I should probably watch out for that too
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?
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.
Omg we need this in Argentina
lol what you guys need is a decent government Anna voters who aren’t complete morons
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.
In other words “accept your slop and like it!”
If you think those are slop, I fear you are looking at bad recipes
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…)
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 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.
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… 🤔
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 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.
I’ll pass on the tofu every time.
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.
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.”
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
