Comment by jfengel
6 days ago
That's too bad. I don't expect fake-meats to be healthy, or cheap, but I like that they can be made without killing animals and without raising them in inhumane conditions.
I had really hoped that people would say, "Well, if it tastes close enough, then how about I go for the cruelty-free version." And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food hamburger.
Perhaps the cognitive dissonance is just too much. The world would be a better place if we ate less meat, even if we don't eliminate it entirely. But to acknowledge the cruelty by avoiding it sometimes means facing it when you do choose animal protein.
Maybe it's just me, but beyond has never tasted close to the original. Impossible does.
The fact that it doesn't taste close to the original and that it commands a price premium is why I ultimately gave up on it. Where I might use beyond, I can usually get a healthier option using ground turkey instead with a much more agreeable flavor and price.
But really, I've just focused on making more meatless dishes in general. Highlighting the flavor of legumes and mushrooms beats trying to fake the flavor of beef.
Impossible definitely has more of a "dead cow funk" taste to it. Which is why I actually prefer Beyond Meat, because it tastes better without "that taste".
I think it actually is "Beyond" meat, in that sense.
The issue I have is I can definitely taste ingredients and they don't really jive with me. Like, the pea and beat flavors come out pretty strongly to me and gives the patties a sort of funky smell.
IMO, this is a much better tasting burger that doesn't try to fake beef flavor (Not vegan) [1]
[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-black-bean-burger-recip...
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Not just you. To me Beyond tastes barely better than the classic fake meat products. Whereas I find impossible actually tastes good.
Beyond is not a convincing substitute. I think it’s delicious for processed food and I prefer it to beef by a lot, but it is definitely beany tasting.
I never found it close enough, and it's expensive, and it's bad for you. So no thanks.
> as good as a fast-food hamburger
But at a much higher price? The value is not really there IMO.
From their performance it seems like the intersection of (cares about animals | methane emissions) & doesn't mind health effects & less price sensitive & must eat hamburger-likes is too small.
Interesting point on cognitive dissonance though. I think it's possible to draw a rational tradeoff between acceptable amount of (externalised) cruelty and personal benefits of eating meat - no cognitive dissonance needed.
I’m completely against factory farming, confinement barns, etc and always avoid meat produced this way.
But I do wonder what you mean when you say “cruelty” in the context of cattle.
Having lived in/around rural livestock production most of my life, I can tell you that most cattle operations I am familiar with take excellent care of the their animals. Minimizing stress is absolutely a top goal for them.
Pork, on the other hand, is almost always produced in a horrifying, cruel way. Confinement barns are terrible in every sense of the word. Pigs are treated without respect from cradle to grave.
It depends on the laws of your country, but here in Canada, you can't slaughter cows on your farm. They have to be transported, often long distances, to a slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouses, and the metal box that brings them there, aren't very nice places for a cow.
Personally, when I want to eat less meat, I just eat something else, because they are enough vegetarian/vegan alternatives out there that I don't really see the point of a poor imitation that's even more expensive than the real thing.
>And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food hamburger.
It's not, though. Vegans that I know always proselytize about how "you can't even tell the difference" but I can tell the difference.
I don't understand the weird vegan obsession with eating fake food. Edible oil product "vegan cheese" and other junk.
If you want to eat meat, eat it. If you don't, don't. You do you, but don't try to sell me on disgusting fake food.
It’s petty straightforward. They want to taste meat but don’t want to eat animals.
My point is they're not tasting meat. Even the Impossible one doesn't taste like meat.
It tastes like imitation meat, the same way artificial vanilla tastes like imitation vanilla.
People are just deceiving themselves.
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lol Way to jump to a conclusion and then use it as your basis for your entire comment. Most people don't want some expensive fake ass meat that is so packed with chemicals and additives that they would rather just buy meat instead and eat it, even if it isnt as healthy as it could be if it were raised more sustainably and naturally than most of it is nowadays.
It was close enough for me and I do acknowledge the cruelty and abstain from many kinds of meat. I was super excited when I tried it first. But after about a year of being part of my regular diet it started being disgusting unfortunately. Now I can only eat it once a in a while.
> how about I go for the cruelty-free version.
They should just use that as a label: https://xkcd.com/641/
Would you like the cruel or cruelty-free patty?
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Are you saying that opting for a beyond burger patty instead of a beef patty is going to "poison and destroy" your health? That's a bit of a stretch no? Are they really any worse for you than a regular burger from a fast food joint or something?
There are no studies I’m aware of where focusing on a plant-based diet makes you “very ill” and gives you “chronic diseases”. On the contrary, it’s not that hard to be healthier.
Meat, on the other hand, is linked to diseases. Especially red meat and cancer.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-canc...
So your scenario is more like “imagine telling a parent ‘Give meat to your kid. They will get sick, unnecessarily kill animals (as we all know, kids hate animals, right?), and accelerate destroying the environment (who needs to live in a good environment, anyway, as long as there are burgers?)’”.
"Linked to" in the sense that someone guessed that red meat might cause cancer, devised a bunch of experiments to prove it, and ended up after incredible amounts of effort with a result that shows just on the very limits of statistical significance that perhaps one person in a population the size of the UK might have a slightly elevated risk of cancer, maybe going from one in 15 to one in 14.
So, yes, "linked to".
You're going to die of heart disease, not bowel cancer caused by eating meat, even if you are a vegan. In fact, especially if you are a vegan, as it turns out, if you believe another ever-so-slightly-sketchy set of statistics. I personally don't, but I have noticed a lot of the people I know who eat a vegan diet don't eat particularly healthy stuff.
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How can you grow plants without killing animals?
I think it's a question of degree. For instance, if you grow an acre of corn you kill a few animals right? And you have an acre of corn which would feed a few people for a year.
A cow takes about 10x as much corn per serving of meat, so that's 10x as many critters killed, and then you have to kill the cow.
The creatures that are killed in the field, or on the road or whatever, they are living their little lives eating and screwing and doing all the fun stuff creatures do until they get brained by a tilling disk or whatever.
A cow on the other hand, in a U.S. cafo? I mean if you like wading through your own shit, nose to asshole with all your compatriots, eating food that your GI tract doesn't even like that much so that you can get overweight? No stimulus, no sex, no variance in diet, then you'd love to be a cow.
For me, I just don't want to eat that.
I live around thousands of cows grazing and they seem just as natural as your critters. I'm glad some folks are aware that producing food kills animals. And graziers are consuming grass. I have friends primarily eating Deer & Graziers, so their animal impact is similar to your happy critters.
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