It’s not obvious that fake meat is healthier than real meat.

I don't think 'healthy' meant no meat there, it was just about (lack of) fast food (whether it be meat or not, but mostly is).

Depends on the meat and its alternative. Later is always better for the environment

Why does it cost more then?

I'm assuming it is because of the lower volume of alternative burgers. Looking at my supermarket, they have probably 150-200 linear feet dedicated to meat and maybe 5-10 for alternatives.

Subsidies. I'll just link my other comment from this thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=32964298

Meat is heavily subsidized.

Because it’s newer and externalities exist?

Cows work for free.

When I think "burger", I think of one I make on my grill, which is delicious, not a McDs or BK burger.

If you compare it to garbage fast food, then of course the impossible burger will be better.

Then you're discussing pretty minor differences. Plenty of people (a billion a day?) enjoy fast food burgers. This seems like just bragging about having really good taste.

> pretty minor differences

There's a massive difference between a McDonald's burger and the kind of burger you'd make fresh (or order at a non-fast-food restaurant). It's not a subtle issue of taste. They're just completely different dishes.

>Plenty of people (a billion a day?) enjoy fast food burgers.

Whoa there. "Enjoy" might be a bit generous. I might suggest endure. A lot of people eating fast food burgers are not doing it because they enjoy it, but at their cheap prices it is just something they can afford. Yes, there is a large portion of people that "like" fast food burgers, and that might be a number that reaches "plenty". But I would imagine that enjoyment is similar to when I was a broke ass college age person that could only afford ramen and enjoyed it as being better than nothing.

Foodie gatekeepers are among the most hilarious of all gatekeepers. Everyone has different tastebuds and just because you don't like fast food doesn't mean the whole world doesn't like fast food. I love the fanciest restaurants, but I can still admit the Big Mac is one of the greatest burgers ever created.

If you are young enough, grease tastes good.

Lol this is kinda crazy: I’m a skinny person that still had to overcome a fast food phase/mild addiction, and my favorite order was 4 junior bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s. They are so good I’d love one right now.

And I love well prepared burgers. I love steak. And I love goldfish. I disagree strongly with your comment.

Wait, what? Why would you eat goldfish?

“Endure” also fits well for regions that are effectively food deserts, where fast food chains might be one of your limited options.

I suspect that the core audience for plant-based burgers generally tries to avoid fast food anyway.

Why? What does "not torturing animals" have to do with "eating healthy food", aside from "both are goods"?

One is an ethical position, and the other is self care, which aren't particularly correlated, except that both require self-control.

Which was why it was amusing how much marketing dollars were spent getting it into fast food locations (where it inevitably was a “buy once and never again” for the vast majority of those who even bothered to try it).

And you probably buy good meat, or even mince it yourself and make your own right?

The vegetarian equivalent isn't anything you can buy (in a supermarket anyway), they're all crap, it's making your own with good (non-meat) ingredients.

I buy the meat at Costco. No prep. Just grill it properly.

100x better than fast food "burgers"

Fast food burgers don’t taste much worse than frozen or even just refrigerated store-bought patties. Neither are tasty.

I guess the pre-made plant burgers will be close to pre-made meat burgers.

I wonder if you can make your own burger out of soy granules, which I found to be the closest to ground beef when properly spiced during rehydration. I should try that some time.

Tanget: Americans in Germany often say our McD tastes better. I find that fascinating, as McD here tastes absolutely horrible to me.

I've never seen anything wrong with grocery store patties. I think the problem with fast food burgers is the bad bread, weird sauces, missing/sparse toppings, and most of all the sloppy half-assed construction. If you make the burger at home with the same patty, it will almost certainly come out much better.

There's nothing wrong with the meat quality per se, but if you're cooking a frozen premade patty you're not properly seasoning it and it's not going to have a good taste.

You could thaw it out, break it down, season it and re-form it. But who does that?

Ngl I don't even know what seasoning I would put on a burger patty. A burger patty to me is just a disc of ground beef, I don't expect anything else from it.

I suspected as much, but I didn't want to be rude. A lot of people are unaware of seasoning and don't really think about why food from one place taste so much better than food from another.

There's a whole lot of seasoning going on with well cooked ground beef. When you go to a restaurant and the burgers pop -- this is why.

The most basic seasoning is salt. Unseasoned beef doesn't taste great and when it's cooked less than ideally often excess condiments are used to make up for the lack of seasoning.

When I cook burgers at home I often mix in diced garlic, a tiny bit of soy sauce, cayenne, msg, and rosemary.

Nothing rude about it, it's the way I prefer burgers. I've never considered restaurant burger special or 'pop'ish, mostly just convenient. I do put lots of raw onions on the burger though, the refreshing crunch of freshly sliced onion goes well with the greasy meat. Restaurant burgers rarely have much onion, and when they do it's usually cooked or limp and sad. A lot of restaurant burgers go heavy on lettuce instead, but lettuce is bland compared to onions.

I know some people prefer unseasoned food, but I think you probably shouldn't be surprised when people complain about lack of seasoning.

One of my kids went through a phase of eating burgers with no toppings at all. Another, noodles with no sauce. It's a preference, but - if the topic is quality of cuisine it shouldn't be surprising that people have higher expectations.

In my experience, if the beef is fresh, high quality, and the right cut, grind and fat content, all it needs is salt on the surface at the time of cooking.

The salt mixed into many pre-made patties makes them increasingly rubbery the longer they sit in the supermarket. The seasonings are usually a crapshoot.

Toppings are a separate matter. Go to town.

Also decent restaurants get their patties pre-made..

The only decent restaurant burger I had was in an American restaurant that grinds their own meat.