The fundamental problem is that everyone has a different reason for wanting plant-based meat/fake meat. So by any particular metric, they have failed.

Some people want fake meat to be a 1:1 meat substitute because they love meat but can't eat it (allergies, cardiovascular, etc). Some people want cheaper meat because quality meat you can trust has grown too expensive. Some people want more vegan/vegetarian options because they object to killing animals or economic externalities that cattle grazing causes. Some people want meat-based substitutes because the companies are public and they are looking for the next unicorn to invest in.

The problem is, those looking for meat substitute think it isn't close enough, those who want cheaper meat think it's too expensive, vegans/vegetarians have actually vegetable based options and aren't necessarily looking for fake meat at all, and investors fell for hype.

Every one of these entities has a different metric, and several of them are at odds with each other. In my opinion, if plant-based meat turns out to be a flop, it will be because its core market is too many different groups and it'll never satiate all of them.

Case in point - read the comments on this article. Everyone has a different reason for wanting or not wanting this stuff.

> the companies are public and they are looking for the next unicorn to invest in.

Just noting that "unicorns" are private companies valued at >=$1B. So, Impossible Foods is already a unicorn (still private, looks like valued around $7B a couple years ago) but Beyond Meat is public and has a market cap <$1B.

I've been slowly cutting meat out of my diet, and stopped eating beef a few years ago.

I think Impossible burgers are too close to beef for me- I feel ill after eating them and no longer do.

Much prefer the classic veggie/bean patties

I really doubt it was the "similarity to meat" that gave you those symptoms (though obviously there is no way for me to verify that, so you have the last word on what happens in your own body).

Anyway - there is a great comment that I saved (https://www.facebook.com/david.zilber/posts/pfbid02CkCY53qDd...)

"Here’s a pesky little chemical called hexanal. If you’ve ever eaten a beyond burger, or any of these plant based products 2.0 (though to be honest, it’s more like they’re on V.46.6.2) and burped 10 or 15 minutes afterwards, and thought to yourself, “Hmmm, wow, ok I definitely just had a meat alternative” you were probably regurgitating this aerosol. Some people think it’s fruity, like green apple, others like mulched grass. At the lab, we had to walk outside to get wafts of it in its pure form, but the minute I opened the cap I knew exactly what this flavour was…. “OLD FRYER OIL, 100%”. It’s metabolized in all manners of organisms through the oxidation of fatty acids, and is… kind of unpleasant?! The point is that while this molecule exists in fava beans, peas, and soy, (the three kings of texturized vegetable protein) when you have a WHOLE FOOD, its there in harmony among all sorts of other volatile compounds, while also being locked away deep inside the beans fibres. It’s the act of processing that concentrated and heightens the presence of off-flavours like these, making the processed foods made from them taste, well, processed. Good with the bad. You can’t concentrate for protein without concentrating other aspects of a plant. There’s always a cost. Now, I will always be a huge proponent for whole foods, made with care, prepared simply. But the realities of grocery store shelves dictate a different truth. People opt for convenience, and sometimes, you’ve got to meet them where they are. My current work at CH has me doggedly hunting down an effect of fermentation I’ve long known intuitively through practice. Certain lactic acid bacteria fermenting their way through legumes don’t just mask, but dismantle this and other problematic molecules. I’m still after the mode of action, but it’s also enough for me to know that age old techniques of fermentation (like soaking ones legumes or grains days in advance of their cooking) can still put to shame the greatest technological “advances” of food science of the past 40 years. Nature is, after all, cleverer than you are. "

While this very well may be true, on this website I think we should hold our science to a higher standard than random Facebook comments

So, if I had posted this myself as a random HN comment, it would be fine but a random Facebook comment should somehow be held to a higher standard?

> if I had posted this myself as a random HN comment, it would be fine but a random Facebook comment should somehow be held to a higher standard

Yes, assuming you had a source.

excuse me while i polish my monocle.

Under/mis-processed legumes are always kinda low-grade toxic. Soaking is OK. Good live tempeh fermentation is amazing.

Anecdotal but I gave them a shot but also felt ill after eating Impossible burgers, now sticking to beef and planning to increase red meat consumption (raising cattle and pigs). I do usually opt for ground chicken or fungus over ground beef though.

I am always nervous about the "I ate this and I felt ill afterwards", because it is very easy to overinterpret.

Just two days ago I had a bit of "ill feeling", and was passing gas more than usual. Why? I ate a Chipotle burrito and I haven't had beans in a while. Not having had beans in a while almost always gives me a bit of gas. But if I keep it up and eat beans more routinely, my gut flora adapts and I get a lot less upset and gas.

I have a hard time calling "beans" a dangerous food. Yeah, some people might quibble about phytotoxins or something, but in general it's a food that has been eaten by a lot of humans for a long time and as such how bad it is is bounded; it can't be that bad. But if you use the "does it make me feel a bit ill" stick on it, you can easily get a false positive.

It is not unreasonable to expect to need a bit of adaptation to a new food. If I pay attention, I can notice a similar reaction, albeit on a smaller scale, to a number of cuisines if I haven't eaten them in a while. But it doesn't mean I can judge those entire cuisines as unsafe.

I actually don't post this in defense of the impossible burgers, which I expect are probably a bad idea for other reasons. I just don't think this is a good or reliable measure of that, because it visibly breaks in many other cases where there clearly isn't a fundamental problem.

(Now, if you eat them consistently for a while and it's still a problem, then you do have a problem. And I'm not asking you to do that, because there is no particular need to be able to eat such things.)

Does any of that really matter if people are buying it anyway?

Not sure. But I think it does help explain articles like this one.

Not really, since the article doesn't support the title.

Great points. Consider the source of the message. Is it a gourmet site? A health magazine? A nature conservation or animal protection group? Nope, "Bloomberg delivers business and markets news, data, analysis, and video to the world".

You're repeating the same all-or-nothing reasoning. For many people looking for a substitute, it is close enough. For many vegans, it is an option they like. It doesn't to be every single person eating it at every meal for it to be successful.

Other vegetarian protein patty substitutes have done just fine for decades selling to customers who want it. Why does Impossible have to eliminate meat altogether in order to succeed? Why can't they just make money providing an option to a growing customer base?

Because profits must go up. Anything else is a failure.

This is a non-response. Profits go up when you give people things they want in a way that's sustainable and decently scalable. Plant-based meats have definitely not reached their peak of market penetration, and manufacturing costs are expected to continue declining.

If they continue to sell and continue to grow the customer base, profits will go up.

> If they continue to sell and continue to grow the customer base, profits will go up.

What I have found is that "profits is not enough", you must be making more profit than the competition.

If the competition is other plant based meat products then it doesn’t matter who wins

Your kind should just start calling it the P-word given how evil you think this term is.

There was also the health marketing angle that flopped when people starting looking at the ingredients.

That's what's stopped me from getting them. They're not any healthier (and arguably less healthy) than the meat they're substituting. I'd rather they stuck with the old soy burgers that tasted less like meat but were clearly healthier (unless you're on a keto diet) than what they've come up with.

Well sure, not the meat itself, but the nitrosamines used to cure it, that's the bad part. According to my old boss who's a cancer researcher, apparently it's pretty carcinogenic. And it's basically unavoidable, the food industry hasn't been able to come up with anything better. Not using it, and having widespread botulism is not very fun.

> Well sure, not the meat itself, but the nitrosamines used to cure it, that's the bad part.

Burger meat isn't cured, though.

It turns out that most fast food burgers are made from heavily processed meat that includes various preservatives and whatnot that make it noticeably less healthy than plain hamburger, unfortunately.

The vast majority of regular meat contains no nitrosamines or other preservatives.

This doesn't make any sense at all. Every one has different reasons for wanting most products. It's this nuance that is at the foundation of the entire field of marketing, and finding appeal for any product in the marketplace.

There are products that are extremely niche that serve very specific purposes that are considered very successful, and there are products that serve very broad appeal across a wide subsection of the population that by all metrics would be considered "failed" (e.g. loss leaders).

The mere fact that you can walk into most restaurants or grocery stores and see an explosion of plant-based alternatives, and that the meat industry itself has been one of the main investors in this space should provide all of the evidence that is contrary to the point you're making.

This article is, quite frankly, an author in search of a specific narrative.

And some people, such as my spouse, much prefer the flavor of Impossible burger over actual ground beef.

>Some people want fake meat to be a 1:1 meat substitute because they love meat but can't eat it (allergies, cardiovascular, etc).

Seems kind of absurd. Presumably a 1:1 meat substitute would be chemically identical to "real" meat and the allergies and health effects associated with it would be identical.

Not meat but happened with milk. Somebody allergic to casein or whey (I don't remember) drank vegan milk, but it was synthesized identical milk. Almost died, scary mistake.

Thanks for making me look this up. I was curious since my wife can't eat dairy proteins (not as a severe a reaction fortunately). I think that it was probably whey. There are some companies that have claimed to create whey that is identical to milk whey from vegan sources [0]. It makes me wonder how the ingredients list is labeled though. Since there are requirements to call out allergic sources in ingredients lists (it will say something like "Contains Milk" or "Allergy Warning: Milk, Tree Nuts") how or if it is listed on there. EDIT: On the Perfect Day website there is a small warning at the bottom that says "Our protein is a milk allergen". Also found some Brave Robot ice cream that uses their protein listed online at my grocery store. Under the Allergen Info it does say "Contains Milk and its Derivatives".

Also while looking around found that for casein, it is still used in some glues [1] on bottle packaging. Likely not the source since it wasn't ingested more of an interesting factoid.

[0] https://perfectday.com/animal-free-milk-protein/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein#Glue

That still seems like two primary groups: meat simulacra and simply veggie-based primary protein. The "try to approximate meat" is usually the main driver of cost/ingredient complexity.

> The problem is, those looking for meat substitute think it isn't close enough, those who want cheaper meat think it's too expensive, vegans/vegetarians have actually vegetable based options and aren't necessarily looking for fake meat at all

I think of this stuff as none of these things. It's nicotine gum.

Nicotine gum won't ever replace cigarettes, nor will people who don't smoke start chewing it.

This is a product for people trying to transition away from a meat-heavy diet. It's never going to be 100% the same, but it's close enough to reduce the cravings. Eventually they'll graduate to healthier, cheaper, and (arguably) better tasting vegetarian products that don't resemble meat at all.

The motivations for cutting back on meat don't matter. Just like there's a market for nicotine gum, there's a market for this.

To add: it’s additionally a cop-out to restaurants providing a vegetarian option.

Eg. Burger joints without veg options are losing sales when a group including a vegetarian slips the meal instead of getting an impossible burger.

Actually, a lot of non-smokers use nicotine products; aside from caffeine it’s one of the few commercially available CNS stimulants out there.

> Nicotine gum won't ever replace cigarettes, nor will people who don't smoke start chewing it.

There are non-smokers who use nicotine gum; I'm one of them. Similar effect to caffeine with a lower half-life, so it's suitable to have later in the day. I'm sure that we're a small group, but if nicotine didn't have the specter of cigarettes hanging behind it, I'd imagine it could be quite a large market.

Plant-based meat is sort of the opposite. Real meat has the specter behind it, so there's a good funnel of people into the product. Furthermore, any kind of taste that's above "edible" eventually gets people acclimated; they expect and learn to enjoy it. I can't prove that on an individual basis, but the plant-based meat market is growing at a healthy clip and has been around for several years, which suggests a lot of repeat buyers. You'd have to provide some kind of evidence to say "eventually they'll graduate", as there's no indication of that so far.

> if nicotine didn't have the specter of cigarettes hanging behind it, I'd imagine it could be quite a large market.

It drives me a little bit crazy that people think nicotine itself is what's harmful about cigarettes. The myth is slowly eroding but the common knowledge about nicotine — aside from the reality that it is addictive — remains directionally wrong (as common knowledge often is).

Can you elaborate? My understanding is that nicotine raises blood pressure, which is a big part of what's harmful about cigarettes.

What’s harmful is the inhalation of the thousands of chemicals into your lungs from a burning cigarette.

Nicotine could be considered bad because its addictive qualities make smoking happen more frequently, but rising blood pressure is a small piece.

Nicotine isn't good for you by any means, but lung cancer is the main reason cigarettes are uniquely harmful. It's a really rough way to go.

Nicotine may be mildly harmful, but in a similar ambiguous you-win-some-you-lose-some way to caffeine: https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

Well, nicotine kind of is one of the most harmful things about cigarettes. During the curing and processing of tobacco leaves, nicotine and other alkaloids partially react with nitrate to form nitrosamines ("Tobacco-Specific Nitrosamines" or "TSNAs"), that contribute greatly to tobacco's carcinogenicity. They're not the only carcinogens in tobacco / tobacco smoke, of course, but they are important. (This is, afaik, not relevant for pure nicotine.)

I disagree - the fundamental problem with mass-market goods is the value proposition.

For a new product to replace an existing one, it has to be at least two of cheaper, better, and/or more convenient.

More convenient is out, and plant-based meat substitutes are neither cheaper nor better than meat. They need to be both.

(Better is a complex of attributes. Taste, texture, variety, tolerance of varied cooking and consumption patterns, keeping duration, side-effects of consumption (like nausea, feeling full, or fibres sticking in teeth), and in the long term, health effects, among them.)

The problem is you could have said the same in the 90s for veggie burgers. Existing and slowly expanding doesn't mean it hasn't been a flop - especially considering the monumental amount of capital & hype that was put behind plant based meat

From that perspective, it's definitely been a flop (so far). Jury is still out on long-term lab grown meat.

There was a hype bubble yes, and from the perspective of the people who bought into the bubble, it has been a flop. But the industry has still undergone slow and steady growth and this trend will likely continue.

Price has kept me away for a few years now. But now the price of everything else is rising to catch up, so maybe I should check it out again

Hah, that's exactly my thought after reading some comments here.

Last I checked, impossible burger was $7.99 on sale. More expensive than beef. That might have flipped recently, with beef rising to obscene prices because of grocery store gouging.

I don't eat meat, personally, but my family does. When we do buy meat we get the organic grass fed kind because they prefer to eat less meat but of higher quality. Impossible's price is on par with the high end ground beef. So, at least for my family, there's no increase in cost.

The article is pushing a narrative. Every once and awhile these flair up, since there's a lot of scared people in the traditional meat/dairy industries right now, since they're losing counter/shelf space in supermarkets and menu options in restaurants all over the world.

I'm not sure if the author has stepped into a grocery store recently, but they're entire aisles/half-aisles dedicated to just plant-based options now, which was unheard of 25 years ago when I originally went vegan.

Hanging the success of an entire movement and industry on two of the most recent entrants to the market seems like a very skewed metric to base your opinion on when the evidence to the contract is absolutely everywhere if you want to look for it or notice it.

The fact that they're not is telling.

Agreed. We definitely have to be more careful these days about which articles are pushing narratives that are designed to enrage or delude us. A long time ago I read an article about how Canadian kids were struggling to adjust with COVID restrictions. But my friend had a 4 year old daughter in Ontario who ate outside when it was -20C. Why? It's shameful.

Shelf space isn’t determined by the grocer so much as it is determined by the supplier. It’s called a slotting fee

In every taste test I've watched, Beyond never scores as high as Impossible. Impossible just seems to be doing better because it tastes better.

Odd. Personally there is something exceedingly off-putting in the aftertaste of Impossible and I occasionally get rancid smelling burps afterwards. Beyond is fine, but still not in my top 5 veggie burgers.

For me personally, Beyond has a weird taste upfront, and Impossible sometimes has the weird burp after. I don't always get it though, so I figure there's an element to who's preparing it.

I personally like Beyond better. I know I'm not alone.

Impossible is still great though

Impossible is also easier to cook with (for me). It can be difficult for either to cook burgers with if you don’t buy pre-formed patties. But Beyond seemed just a little more difficult. And gross. Uncooked Beyond was a little more gooey than Impossible.

Just from that regard, I could see Impossible performing better because it is easier to integrate into existing recipes. Don’t discount the contribution of cooks in this equation.

I’m a simple man. I prefer the taste of meat, and the protein quality, but some of these products are pretty good. If they were substantially cheaper than meat - which would be possible from a fundamental principles analysis - then I’d buy them. There is no way I’m paying a premium for these products.

Did we read the same article?

FTA:

> Supermarket sales of refrigerated plant-based meat plummeted 14% by volume for the 52 weeks ended Dec. 4, according to retail data company IRI. Orders of plant-based burgers at restaurants and other food-service outlets for the 12 months ended in November were down 9% from three years earlier, according to market researcher NPD Group.

> Beyond lost sales in almost every channel last quarter. Over the past year it laid off more than 20% of its workforce

That's a pretty good description of a failing growth industry.

Beyond losing sales and laying people off is compatible with a growth industry where numerous other entrants are starting to steal the customer base of the first mover by charging less or having better products.

Of course, that is counterbalanced by retail and restaurant trends.

A friend and I did a (literal) blind taste test with impossible/USDA organic beef/beyond. I was excited to do this as we don't get Impossible in Europe. We baked our own buns etc, cooked to temp with a probe, got some nice cheese on top good stuff. We also did a blind tests of the proteins on their own, and in a plain burger. Neither of us had any trouble picking out which product was which, but it was really interesting.

Beyond was the most divisive. It has a very distinct flavour which isn't anything like beef, and not everyone likes. I think it's fine, but it's more of a tasty protein than a beef replacement.

Impossible is a really interesting product. It tastes good, texture is good, and I would happily eat a burger made from it. I can definitely tell the difference side-by-side, but I think if it's cooked well-done in a ragu or meatballs, it would be more difficult to tell.

The main complaint I have is that it both can be quite hard to form and have a tendency to turn into sludge. So you have to handle them very cold before the fat melts.

In Switzerland meat is expensive. Organic ground/minced beef from Farmy is something like $15-20/lb. Organic chicken breast is $50/lb (around $15/breast). Beyond is about $10/lb so there is certainly a cost saving to be had. All the supermarkets have extensive plant based options and vegetarianism/veganism is pretty common here. I think it'll be interesting to see how this pans out globally with improved animal welfare. My next experiment is eggs (which are almost 1 CHF/per!). Unfortunately the egg substitutes are almost the same price per weight from what I can see.

Is there non-organic meat in Switzerland?

For fresh, organic, skinless, boneless chicken breast you can pay $27/lbs in the US at an upscale store. Or skin-on non-organic at Walmart for under $3.

I have no frame of reference for if that is the beast chicken you can get from a fancy grocery store or the standard chicken from a standard store.

Your eggs seem to be about 50% higher than US eggs right now. Which seems to work out to a similar multiple if your chicken breast prices are for high-end chicken in a high-end store.

> A random sample from this summer (2020) shows a kilogram of ham from conventional animal husbandry cost an average of 23 francs (21 euros), whereas a kilogram of organic ham cost 51 francs (47 euros) — more than twice as much.

https://www.dw.com/en/switzerland-meat-animals-farmers/a-545...

For reference, see another post in my history. The cheapest imported chicken breast you can buy from a typical supermarket is around 10-15 CHF/kg. The high-end organic is around 50-60 CHF/kg which is high welfare from Switzerland. So you can certainly eat meat on a budget, but the good local stuff is priced accordingly.

>but I think if it's cooked well-done in a ragu or meatballs, it would be more difficult to tell. The main complaint I have is that it both can be quite hard to form and have a tendency to turn into sludge.

Agreed on this point and its why most of the time I buy some of the pre-done items (meatballs most often) that I think taste good and work out pretty well.

> In Switzerland meat is expensive. Organic ground/minced beef from Farmy is something like $15-20/lb. Organic chicken breast is $50/lb (around $15/breast).

That's insane. I'm in the USA and I can get organic ground beef for under $7/lb. Organic chicken breast for $8/lb. Both can be even lower if I buy in bulk.

If you don't care about it being organic, then both of them get to $3/lb.

The only places on Earth where beef is as or more expensive are Hong Kong and Korea. It's a steep drop off from those three.

Food prices in general are higher in Switzerland (1.6x EU in 2020), but meat is exceptionally expensive (2.3x EU). This affects both organic and non-organic stock. Most of the margins on both are to retailers.[1]

> The system only works because Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), but not part of the European Economic Area. It can therefore easily isolate itself from the EU internal market and protect domestic products from foreign competition.

> "Switzerland doesn't get flooded with cheap meat from Germany. That's a huge advantage for Swiss farmers," says Martin Rufer.

> Anyone entering Switzerland may import a maximum of 1 kilogram of meat or meat products per person. Anything above that will get extremely expensive because of the high customs duties.

1: https://www.dw.com/en/switzerland-meat-animals-farmers/a-545...

Don't forget that salaries in Switzerland are very high. In Geneva, the minimum legal salary before taxes is at 26$/h

Eating animals is incredibly resource intensive, and farming animals for meat results in externalities that are not paid by the producers or consumers.

Perhaps instead it's the USA prices that are "insane."

Are the Swiss using their extra profits from meat to deal with the externalities you mention?

Where are you shopping? It’s not even close to that at migros.

Speak for yourself. Meat has been absurdly expensive for me here, to the point where I've had to cook vegetarian meals on and off.

In the post I mentioned organic from Farmy. But even Naturaplan chicken breasts from the Coop are close to 60CHF/kg:

https://www.coop.ch/en/food/meat-fish/packaged-fresh-meat/po...

If you go for Prix Garantie, it's much cheaper at about 12/kg:

https://www.coop.ch/en/food/meat-fish/packaged-fresh-meat/po...

But this isn't Swiss chicken any more, the pack photo from there is Hungary.

Something insidious that happened to a lot of customers with Impossible, and I actually think this is a "good" thing for those who were omnivorous-- Burger King(One of the largest fast food chains in America) was cooking Impossible Burgers in the same grease as real meat. People were saying "Wow Impossible tastes just like beef, maybe better!"

I think this kind of transition, while somewhat deceptive, is great because it opens people's minds to the idea of a plant burger. Later on, you can eliminate the beef grease and the same people will continue enjoying Impossible Burgers because their palate has become more receptive. Then perhaps they might be open to other vegetarian options that are less oriented toward animal meat. I think these kind of gradual behavior changes are quite powerful where beating someone over the head with tofu and chickpeas fails.

The full title of TFA:

"Fake Meat Was Supposed to Save the World. It Became Just Another Fad Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods wanted to upend the world’s $1 trillion meat industry. But plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop."

It is of course for any business to "flop", whether or not it makes good products.

A "$1 trillion meat industry" with influential interests is not going to transform (much less disappear) suddenly. Consumers of meat products, like people who seem to need bigger and bigger vehicles, are accustomed (conditioned) to viewing their needs a certain way.

The failure of a business that sought to deliver a product that would change the above is not a surprise. For sociological context, consider (as TFA states) that McDonalds is still selling its plant-based product in markets outside the US.

None of this changes the principles of vegetarianism or veganism. These practices have existed for a long time and for good reasons.

Yes they are more available now, I live in the Spanish countryside and there is an abundance of plant-based meat options around me. Nuggets, burgers, schnitzels, even made into local tapas (alas, frozen).

Agree. There are no headlines for: "People still eat tacos, so pizza has failed."