Comment by cmiles8
5 days ago
For the whole industry is trying to solve a problem that never really existed.
Folks can not like meat for ethical issues but it is a good source of protein and our bodies are designed to eat it. If you don’t want to eat meat there are other good sources of nutrients from a carefully designed vegetarian diet. The whole “fake meat” thing was always just a silly gimmick.
More broadly, as others have highlighted, the result is mostly over-processed lab goo that most health conscious people would avoid. There are plenty of good sources of protein without the need for magic shakes either.
Net here is a business trying to solve problems that aren’t really problems. The stock being down 98.9% is a reflection of that cold reality.
“our bodies are designed to eat it”
Even if that were true, our bodies were designed in a different era. Long before factory farming and antibiotics, long before curing and flavorings. Yes, high quality meat can be healthy but how many people are eating high quality meat?
If you want to criticize Beyond Meat for being processed goop, you must compare it to the meat regular people are eating every day… which is also processed goop but with added antibiotics and disease. The average American consumer would be much healthier if they immediately swapped all of their meat consumption with plant-based alternatives.
You can like the taste of meat but think it's unethical to kill animals for food. It's not necessarily a "problem", but it is something a reasonable person might want, and so there can be a market for it.
There is nothing that says we are "designed" to consume animal protein.
Beyond, Impossible, and the like have suffered from misinformation and an industry-funded, influencer-laden social media smear campaign to paint these alternative products as highly-processed franken-foods.
They are a good alternative for health and environmentally-conscious folks, solve real sustainability challenges, and aren't terrible for you in moderation.