<story><title>Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/business/beyond-meat-industry.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>colordrops</author><text>I see you are being downvoted, but I know exactly what you mean.  When I eat Impossible and especially Beyond burgers, my stomach feels slightly off. A bit of indigestion.  I don&amp;#x27;t get this with typical veggie patties.</text></item><item><author>TaylorAlexander</author><text>I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia&amp;#x2F;novelty in going to a fast food joint.&lt;p&gt;But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger or a garden burger. Those taste light and yummy and don’t leave a weird feeling in my stomach.</text></item><item><author>gwbas1c</author><text>I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.)&lt;p&gt;One &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I&amp;#x27;ve heard in restaurants in the last few years is &amp;quot;we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond&amp;#x2F;incredible&amp;#x2F;whatever patty.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I&amp;#x27;ve had these products, I&amp;#x27;ve always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers &amp;#x2F; sausages that don&amp;#x27;t try to taste like meat.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Some say the slowdown in sales is a product of food inflation, as consumers trade pricier plant-based meat for less-expensive animal meat.&lt;p&gt;Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It&amp;#x27;s because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it&amp;#x27;s cheaper.&lt;p&gt;IMO, I think the &amp;quot;meat in a vat&amp;quot; system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach. When I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SoftTalker</author><text>Beyond&amp;#x2F;Incredible meat is awful. There&amp;#x27;s no other description for it. This highly processed fake meat is not healthy. Just eat meat, or don&amp;#x27;t if you don&amp;#x27;t want to. There&amp;#x27;s no need for this fake garbage.</text></comment>
<story><title>Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/business/beyond-meat-industry.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>colordrops</author><text>I see you are being downvoted, but I know exactly what you mean.  When I eat Impossible and especially Beyond burgers, my stomach feels slightly off. A bit of indigestion.  I don&amp;#x27;t get this with typical veggie patties.</text></item><item><author>TaylorAlexander</author><text>I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia&amp;#x2F;novelty in going to a fast food joint.&lt;p&gt;But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger or a garden burger. Those taste light and yummy and don’t leave a weird feeling in my stomach.</text></item><item><author>gwbas1c</author><text>I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.)&lt;p&gt;One &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I&amp;#x27;ve heard in restaurants in the last few years is &amp;quot;we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond&amp;#x2F;incredible&amp;#x2F;whatever patty.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I&amp;#x27;ve had these products, I&amp;#x27;ve always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers &amp;#x2F; sausages that don&amp;#x27;t try to taste like meat.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Some say the slowdown in sales is a product of food inflation, as consumers trade pricier plant-based meat for less-expensive animal meat.&lt;p&gt;Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It&amp;#x27;s because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it&amp;#x27;s cheaper.&lt;p&gt;IMO, I think the &amp;quot;meat in a vat&amp;quot; system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach. When I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steve_adams_86</author><text>I’m not positive but I have a feeling it’s the methylcellulose. In my own home experimentation, none of the ingredients seem to cause issues except for that.&lt;p&gt;It seems fairly benign, but it can’t be digested and it isn’t clear to me if we have gut flora which can break it down efficiently.&lt;p&gt;I enjoy throwing together little experiments in a similar vein to beyond meat or impossible burger products, but it feels too much like a lab experiment to eat regularly. My kids like “meat balls” with spaghetti, so I tend to make that and otherwise I’m gravitating back towards whole food-based garden burgers.&lt;p&gt;A weird thing about beyond&amp;#x2F;impossible is that while they appear moderately healthier than real meat from some perspectives… They are still pretty trashy. I can’t not feel like I’m making a bad choice, even if it’s home made, and at the end of the day I just want to feel good (mentally and physically) about my food.</text></comment>