I am a vegetarian who eats almost entire vegan. I know a lot of other veg/an and plant based diet people.

My experience for veg/ans matches the article. Substitutes like Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger are almost always a novelty or treat - something you would order out at an omni restaurant, or maybe bring to a cookout where meat eaters were also grilling. It's nice to have as an option but we're used to building our meals around staples like tofu, beans, tempeh, seitan etc.

I hear way more about these newer processed products from meat eaters who think this is what we would eat regularly, or are excited to try them out themselves. After the recent meat shortages and the million pandemic articles about "how to cook beans" I am convinced the actual target market is meat eaters who are looking to build meals around something as close to meat as possible, rather than people who are plant based.

Impossible Burger is not aimed at vegans. It is aimed at carnivores. It's not particularly "organic" or healthy. It just tastes like a Burger King Whopper. It's selling fine, and it has to be very profitable, given the ingredients and the reasonably simple manufacturing process.

Now now, that is a very charitable comment about its taste. As usual in food, more processing -> cheaper and lower quality. Sure, it might have similar macronutrients but real health is in getting enough micros.

It wasn't considered "overprocessed" when it was sold at high-end restaurants for too much money. Only after they got it into volume production did the foodies get upset.

Are you suggesting a Burger King Whopper holds the key to real health?

Burger King sells a meat-based Whopper burger and an Impossible Burger based Whopper burger. So you can easily make a direct comparison at any Burger King outlet.

At least for their adoption in places like burger king et al, it's a great way to expand an already massive market. Without that burger, those chains would just have fries and coke for vegetarians, and for many, road trips might today consist of planning stops around the next taco bell for a sure source of black beans.

Yeah, as a reducetarian I feel like these products are aimed squarely at me and even if they're more expensive right now I feel like I'm helping with the learning curve for reducing their price when I buy them.

"as a reducetarian"

I applaud you for taking the slow, steady and sustainable route. More people need to realize it's not "all or nothing"

Yeah, I've also cut out broiler chickens and try to emphasize sea food.

The plan, as far as I can tell, is to raise the price of meat so "sort of meat" has a place at the table for people who cannot afford real meat.

From the article:

> Importantly it should be noted that 93% of Beyond Meat’s consumers are in actual fact meat–eaters, not vegetarian or vegans as popularly perceived.

From their website:

> We hope our plant-based meats allow you and your family to eat more, not less,of the traditional dishes you love, while feeling great about the health, sustainability, and animal welfare benefits of plant protein.

Doesn't sound like their value proposition is really built around vegetrains/vegans at all.

I'd argue that it is built around aspiring vegetarians. If you're used to eating meat at almost every meal it can be intimidating to try to plan and prepare meatless meals. Beyond burgers and similar products provide something meat eaters understand and can easily incorporate into their diet to reduce meat consumption.

"Doesn't sound like their value proposition is really built around vegetrains/vegans at all"

you are right - it's not. They care about convincing people to eat less meat because that's where the greatest impact is. Veg's already don't eat meat - this is just a beneficial option that they can choose.

It's fundamentally a bet that the technology is now good enough to unlock a market (basically the same as betting on Tesla a few years ago). The value prop is the tech eventually moving down-market and becoming a filler in some yet unknown 60/20/20 (just pulling reasonable sounding numbers out of my ass here), with the last 20 being plant based, ground beef that will be so close to conventional ground beef that consumers will default to it and billions[1] of pounds a year will fly off the shelves of Walmart, Costco and the like.

[1] https://data.oecd.org/agroutput/meat-consumption.htm

Minimizing water usage, carbon emissions, etc. are also important yet separate concerns from being organic or practicing regenerative agriculture.

I especially like the non-death factor.

Yeah, it just doesn't fall under environmental consciousness that the parent comment was asking about.

The article claims that "93% of Beyond Meat's customers are meat-eaters", but also acknowledges that "no ethically aligned solutions immediately spring to mind".

In my personal experience these products are mostly for non-vegetarians or for new vegetarians.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I had some recent comments on this, as someone who's currently using Beyond Meat as their primary protein source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/gtrcm5/comment/...

tl;dr:

* It's potentially safer than meat during the pandemic

* I support any advancements that may enable humanity to phase out killing animals over the long term, such as clean meat (lab-grown meat) and plant-based meat

* It's one of a very small number of high-quality (high-PDCAAS and low-carbohydrate) protein sources that I'm aware of

* Enjoyment-wise, it's a close enough substitute for my taste

* I'm somewhat concerned about it being a heavily processed food as well as reportedly having its pea protein isolate sourced from China, and I wish they would reduce (or eliminate) the canola oil in favor of more coconut oil, but afaict there's nothing obviously terrible in it

> Long-term I believe humanity should phase out killing animals anyway (via either clean/lab-grown meat or future iterations of plant-based meat)

This inclusive of hunting and (recreational) fishing? If so how do we do animal population and habitat management?

I mean, in an ideal world no one would ever die or be unhappy, but I won't pretend to be an expert on all the legitimate reasons that we kill things.

I should have phrased that as phasing out specifically killing animals for food. I fish myself, and I'm not advocating for any kind of drastic short-term change; over the long term, it's conceivable to me that use cases like recreational fishing could be addressed with AI robot fish and/or highly immersive VR/AR.

My take: beyond as a company is long-term worthless. Not because this isn't where people's diets are headed - fully convinced that's going to happen. But there are at least two competitors in my area and they taste essentially the same as name-brand beyond.

But, I Am Not A Capitalist, so... maybe they'll manage to entrench themselves thru brand recognition or supply chain monopolies.