It's always been cheaper than the actual meat. It'd be weird if it wasn't.
A plant should have been way cheaper than meat to begin with. Who do they think they're fooling?
When Beyond Beef switched from v2 to the v3 (w/ avocado oil), my wife and I tried it and were like, "THERE IT IS! They finally fucked up a good thing, as predicted.."
But after eating v3 for several months and look lucking my way back into a box of v2 at Costco, I can firmly say that v2 was kind of shit.
You just have to season your Beyond Burgers now, is all. You didn't have to before. At least we never did.
lol fucking where??? Im in a major city in Canada and a lb of beyond or impossible is like $10+ An impossible whopper has come down in price but it’s still more expensive than a regular. Thats always been the issue with plant based beef, even though it’s made of soy, it costs me double what beef does, so I don’t blame poor people avoiding it
In Tesco apparently.
I like cheap and accessible plant-based alternatives. But this doesn't really sound like that. It's much closer to "now the poor people have to eat weeds lol"
A distinction without a difference. Let's subsidize legumes and plant-based products to the same level animal-based parts are subsidized and see which one is cheaper.
Beyond isn't cheap. It's super expensive. I don't really get the appeal, but I've never really eaten corpses so that's probably why.
Oh waow much edgy
Like calling regular food “weeds”.
Genuinely I might end up going vegan for mostly financial reasons
Vegetarian but when I don't have my kids I'm kinda already there. It's so good for your heart health as well btw. There's no where for your fibre intake to go but up. I would suggest talk to a nutritionist though because you will very likely need a supplement or two there are some vitamins/minerals that are just hard to get from vegetable sources at the volume you get from meat.
There's some good vegan recipe communities here on lemmy if you want some inspiration
!veganhomecooks@lemmy.world
!veganrecipes@sh.itjust.works
Thanccs :3
And 90% of them tend to be shit that tastes or looks good.
I have some ugly, tasteless tofu ready instead. Now to figure out how to season it to make it edible without overdosing on it.
And I still had to include 4 eggs. It's more ethical than eating the animal itself, but still...
I love vegetarian food but they can pull eggs and dairy from my cold dead hands. I will never give either of those up ever.
Ironically, I hate eggs, unless they are like Pancakes or cakes, I love cheese/milk, but I cannot live without Vitamin B12, and I feel reinforced defeats the point. There's some unstable ones from microorganisms on certain mushrooms. You can't predict if it is present or not, which is a problem.
I secretly tried to go full vegan, though I would be open to eating meat and such, I didn't want to DEPEND on anything that walks, I wanted vegeterian to be the food basis.
I also do thing it is a good practice to practice non-harm (issue with the animals themselves, I do NOT enjoy knowing something has to die or be exploited for me to eat, I do not want to live that way), but I also want to get away with it by using fake meat like Tofu, without doing the whole "I'm vegan you fucking carno-murderhobos!". I want to pretend to be a carno, I'd also eat roadkill, so long as I don't depend on it (it is more about resources and safety than purely ethics, ethics too though).
Had to reread that like 5 times to realize you were not saying that you thought those were bad recipes
That's 90% of the problem. People can't read, get upset, bring on the mob, torches, and pitchforks.
I say shit anyway.
Omg we need this in Argentina
lol what you guys need is a decent government Anna voters who aren’t complete morons
And here in the US it seems the prices are going up to keep pace with beef prices. I'd love to have plant based be cheeper. As it is rn I basically never eat meat. Both are too expensive
Lentils, beans, tofu, chickpeas. Much healthier, cheaper.
In other words “accept your slop and like it!”
Sure, but I also want some affordable fake meat.
TVPs are absolutely underrated, it sure takes some learning but after that.. Cheapest ever. (Never boil, always fry with spices and then add a little bit of water/veggie stock/tomato sauce..)
I love the texture TVP. But you need to mix it with other stuff, other wise it tastes blain. But with the right flavour, like stir fry flavour, it's a great protein filling addition.
Huh, you fry the dry TVP? Do you then let it simmer in the sauce for as long as one would normally boil it?
I have some steak-like TVP here, which is going to remain dry in the core, unless you really give it its time, so not sure how well it would work with that.
I do also have (pre-)roasted TVP, though, where I assumed, they do that when extruding or something. Maybe they actually throw it into a big pan before shipping... 🤔
I add plenty of oil in the pan and some onions, then add the dry TVP, mix well, add all the spices, let fry until it looks "right" and then I add water/veggie broth or canned tomatoes, depending on what I do. This works with small or smaller texture or "mince-type" or so.
With big, steak-like pieces I do soak them in hot water for like 5 minutes before frying, but never boil.
I'll pass on the tofu every time.
https://sixhungryfeet.com/16-tofu-recipes-to-convert-a-meat-lover/
Hey, thanks for the link! I'm not a vegan, but I do respect the choice. And I'm always on the lookout for good recipes! Good food is good food.
To be fair, saying you don’t like tofu is often more about how you’ve had it than tofu itself.
It’s basically a neutral base, so it takes on whatever flavors and textures you give it. If it’s under-seasoned or cooked wrong, it’s bland and kind of unpleasant. But the same is true for a lot of foods. A badly cooked egg can be rubbery or sulfur-heavy, but that doesn’t mean eggs are bad overall.
Tofu just has a higher “skill floor.” You usually need to press it, season it well, and match the type to the dish. Done right, it can be crispy, creamy, chewy, or even meaty depending on how it’s prepared.
I would encourage you to venture out and give it a try. You probably haven’t had tofu prepared in a way you enjoy it yet.”
There's still a lot of other whole plant-based foods to have instead! There are plenty of people on plant-based diets without any tofu
I don't have an emotional attachment to meat. I'd like non-meat stuff to be cheaper, and the real costs of meat to be accounted for.
This. I could go vegan today if the fake meat stuff was more affordable. Right now I'm maybe half of the way there.
Honestly as long as it doesn't taste weird or have a strange texture I don't mind plant based meats
Impossible, at least to me, is functionally indistinguishable from a ground beef patty. Back when I was vegetarian and before I was vegan, I went to Burger King on lunch to try the Impossible Whopper. I wasn't fond of Burger King, but I was mostly curious enough to see what an Impossible Burger tasted like having had Beyond at home once (where Beyond is pretty easily distinguished from ground beef by its flavor).
Walked in, walked out, took a bite in my car. Straight-up almost went back in and asked for a new one before realizing it wouldn't do any ethical good and that I didn't have the time. This was even after seeing that it was in the Impossible-branded wrapper. I decided to go there another time to "try the real one", and it was the same. I was dumbfounded; it was straight-up just a Whopper – having admittedly not eaten a BK burger in a few years at that point. (They also put mayo on it by default without telling you, so good job, BK.)
I had the same experience. I couldn’t tell the difference at all. Wondered if a mistake had been made, but had the same experience the next time. And I’ve had enough people tell me that they can’t tell the difference.
This company did not become gigantic for no reason!
Same! My introduction was that I ordered the "burger" at a gastropub that was a vegan restaurant (unbeknownst to me). It was delicious so I asked the bartender for another and he goes "another veggie burger?" and I said "No I had the meat burger" and he replied "we don't have a meat burger here". My mind was blown! And now I don't buy beef anymore lol
This is actually why I prefer the Beyond to Impossible. Both command a premium, and the Impossible is so indistinguishable that it feels like a waste of money. The Beyond has a great taste, but is not exactly beef flavor. They smell like cat food to me before they're cooked, but I find myself craving the taste now and again because it is something unique.
Yeah, that's super fair. Both have a place. Beyond is something different as a novelty if you already eat meat; I'd liken it to a non-vegan using agave over honey. For vegetarians/vegans, it's nice to have basically a 1:1 if you want it. Even for vegans and vegetarians, it's valid to prefer Beyond over that 1:1 replica. And for non-vegetarians trying to be more climate-conscious or a bit less unhealthy (Impossible is far from healthy – its saturated fat content, for example, is nearly as bad as ground beef's – but it's also less likely to give you colorectal etc. cancer), it's a reasonable choice.
There is absolutely a place for both products. Impossible did exactly what they set out to do in flavor and texture mimicry. It's the one I tried first as a meat eater and that's what got me to try Beyond and a few others.
I hear the complaints about the fat and sodium in the products, and while it sounds less than ideal due a vegan or vegetarian diet, it doesn't sound that bad for an omnivore, especially one that eats less veg. The great thing about them being a manufactured product is both of those things can change through product development. I remember reading that Impossible went through numerous revisions to stand up to Burger King's conveyor belt grill system.
I'm very excited for the future of these types of products.
The greatly increased sodium content is a concern for my household, though.
Those are older recipes. Always read the ingredients tho.
Oh yeah I should probably watch out for that too
Totally. I’m hoping they can get it real close and less expense. Then start the swap out
Same. I tried a Burger King when they had a deal where you could get the regular Whopper and the Beyond (or whatever brand it was, of plant-based meat) Whopper for the price of one, so I figured, taste test. The regular Whopper is your typical trashy fast food burger that is on the better side of decent, without being good. The mayonnaise and ketchup are a bit strong, but between the lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles, it's a well balanced sandwich. I'd like the burger to be thicker, but this is what's keeping it from being a good burger. So then the Beyond one. It tastes burnt, like the most important flavour to emulate was the "char-broiled" feature. Beyond the burnt flavour, it just tastes... bland. They could have seasoned it better, maybe.
I want to believe in plant-based. Not because I want to be a vegan. But because IDGAF about whether it's animal-based or plant-based. I don't think most people should. I have a unique condition (bariatric surgery) where I actually need animal protein. So vegan stuff can't be my main thing, but I can have some of it. But for people who don't actually need animal protein? I wanna see that stuff succeed so much.
Edit: Someone actually beat me to it, and the plant-meat BK uses is Impossible, not Beyond. Still, I disagree with that person — there was a pretty big difference between the two. Maybe Impossible has gotten better over the years?
I don't really see the point in them though. Why would I buy plant meat to make a not chicken wrap when I could just make a mixed bean wrap.
Variety.
Some people prefer the meat taste, not a bean taste
Like so much else, it seems to be a useful innovation predicated on a certain degree of professionalized cultivation and expert engineering. I predict I'm going to enjoy the loss-leading rollout and hate the post-market-saturation enshittification.
In the states, you can buy 4 big blocks of tofu for next to nothing at Costco.
It’s super easy to make (throw some soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice vinegar on small pieces in the toaster oven) and delicious.
Extra form tofu.
taste may be great but for me it’s sometimes the “mouth feel” that gets me with tofu. wish i could fix that. (it’s a me thing)
There's multiple types of tofu with different textures. Silken and soft tofu are different than firm which are different than extra firm
Extra firm tofu, cooked at 375 degrees has a good, solid consistency.
I’ve had squishy tofu and yeah that’s the suck. I don’t make mine that way.
Not all tofu is the same!
I haven't successfully made tofu :(
Idk how but it gets a weird tangy taste when I make it
Try different recipes, you'll find one.
There's different kinds of tofu.
Extra firm tofu, pressed for at least 30 minutes
- cut into 12 pieces
- place into silicon cupcake tray
- add 1-2 tablespoons of soy sauce
- air fryer at 375 for 20 minutes
- flip tofu cubes
- another 375 for 20 minutes
What are you seasoning it with and are you pressing it / how long are you pressing for?
Extra firm tofu, pressed for at least 30 minutes.
Mix in a bowl
- 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
Marinate and cook on a silicon mat 375 for 45 minutes (flip every 15 minutes)
Or
Toaster oven: Silicon cupcake tray with mix and tofu divided by 12, 375 for 20 minutes flip and cook another 20 minutes.
Tofu is always terrible in my opinion. You probably did nothing wrong.
It certainly generates a negative reaction from folks, but it’s just soy beans.
Cooked right, it’s better than any average meat from the grocery store.
No gristle, no pink-in-middle issues, or safe handling required. 🤷🏻♂️
Which is great if you live anywhere near a Costco.
Sadly my closest Costco is a two hour drive away. And that's not actually counting any city driving that I'd need to do.
Kroger sells it for like $2.25/pound. It's cheap.
Jesus this is like half what I'm paying at my local supermarket.
$2.59aud / 450g pack at Aldi in Australia.
I also now live about 2.5 hours from the nearest Costco. I still have the membership so i now get a lot of stuff delivered. Check out Costco.com. It might be worth it for you.
I like that as the meat industry pushes to prevent plant based food from using certain meat words like "sausage" and "burger" but there will always be other slightly less common words, like "mince" and "hash"
I've never heard of it called mince in the US.
It's more of a British English term than an American English one
its similar to the catfish organizations who demanded foreign catfish to be marketed as swai or basa because they couldnt compete.
When the reverse was true it really rubbed me the wrong way. Soybeans are dirt cheap and soybean meal (the defatted version) even more so. On agricultural markets soybean meal is around 300-400 dollars per metric ton. That means it's traded for less than a dollar per kg. Yet soy based vegan products were for years more expensive than the meat alternative, and lots of these animals would have eaten more than 1kg of soy containing feed to produce each kg of meat. It makes no sense to me. Yes processing the soy meal into a tasty meat alternative is not cheap, obviously, but are you telling me the soy meal to meat conversion is cheaper than the soy meal to faux meat conversion? Really put me off from vegan products.
Same is true for things like oat milk. Oats in bulk cost pretty much nothing yet they managed to sell it for more than cow milk. What am I paying for? Marketing? Corporate profits? And don't bring up the whole "animal proteins are subsidized" bit. I don't know about the US but in the EU the subsidies are based on agricultural area. 1 hectare of soy plantation gets the same amount of subsidies as 1 hectare of any other animal feed crop. That's not the explanation.
I see this as a huge improvement and if plant based products are to really take off they have to be an affordable alternative even to the non vegan.
What am I paying for? Marketing? Corporate profits?
They want to make money by targeting the smaller market of people with more money. It's marketing strategy, usually tied to "wellness" - which is a super huge market (almost entirely grifters.)
A lot of the “meat imitation” products that got lots of press and media attention were highly engineered products with a lot of unique processes involved, as well as a lot of unique technologies. The raw soy protein input wasn’t the expensive part, it was all the additives to make it more “meat like” that required expensive new production lines, in addition to all the marketing and R&D (paying off the VC investors who funded it really).
There is also the grocery store distribution side of things. These products were niche and didn’t sell particularly large volumes, so grocery stores marked them up a lot to justify the opportunity cost of using shelf space on them rather than something that would have sold at a higher volume.
The reality is, you can get plenty of cheap as hell meat substitutes, they’ve been around for decades (millennia really), you just have to go to speciality stores, or order them online, where enough volume is sold to allow for low margins. meat imitations sold as speciality products in mainstream stores are expensive. An example of a substituted as supposed to an imitation would be textured vegetable protein (often abbreviated to TVP)which can be used in the same way as ground meat. It won’t be the same, you will be able to tell the difference, but, it won’t be worse(assuming it’s seasoned properly) just different, like substituting ground pork for ground beef. And TVP can absolutely be found for much cheaper than ground meat, if purchased from the right place.
Soybeans as a commodity can be cheap, but that doesnt mean that an end product made out of soybeans will also inherently be cheap.
The market for soybean based meat alternatives is not that huge, so one of the more expensive aspects of trying to have an end product in an actual brick and mortar store is going to be getting space on the shelf in the first place. Packaging design and maybe some marketing, not to mention creating the actual product itself. All that stuff is expensive even if its mostly soybeans that the end product is made from
Laundry detergent is like 95% water, but it costs far more than if it was actually 100% water
Same. I feel like vegans are being taken advantage of. Soy and oat and other grain based replacements for animal products should be dirt cheap. They're marketing to hipsters and pricing accordingly. So all that shit about the economy and whatnot? Marketing trash. Make that shit cost what it should and way more people would buy it. Especially with everything going up.
Not sure about soy beans, but you can buy a lot of beans very cheaply. Oats are also very cheap.
Processed foods are always going to cost more, and probably suck. Make your own, meat or vegan it's going to be better for you, tastier, or both.
You don't have to buy such products when you are vegan but personally I'd rather be taken advantage of than have non-human animals be taken advantage of and in a much more severe way. People really get thrown off at the slightest inconvenience when it affects them...
Ah yes, the "slight inconvenience" of being poor.
Fair, and expected, but why not both? Why can't vegan food be profitable and also cheaper than animal-based products? Because of greed taking advantage of people with hearts bigger than their wallets but who will open it regardless and just pay more. The one who is more frugal and doesn't have as strict of dietary restrictions sees the bullshit on both sides but buys what's affordable.
I will say this for you vegans... one of you got me curious about oat milk, so I started asking for it at my favourite coffee shop, and I think it makes their coffee better. They push it with new customers, but they serve whole (cow) milk as well. Once I opted for cow milk a couple times, they stopped asking. So I had to mention that I was curious about oat milk. Hoping to push the trend back, where they stop asking me and just do oat milk. I'll buy oat-based creamer if it's cheaper/on sale. I want to give it a try at home now. Not because it's more ethical, but because I found it makes my coffee better.
I like eating meat. I'm not gonna mince words here. But if I found a plant-based alternative I liked and it was cheaper (or comparable), I would get it more, but I have to be careful... because I still need animal protein due to the surgery I got a couple years ago.
Where I live there are little processed vegan options, they are hard to come by/identify, and there are no vegan sections but I'm glad that they are here at all tbh given the state of things. As for prices just like with everything you judge things on a per product basis. If there's something that costs more than I'm willing to pay I just skip it as I'm not forced to buy certain types of products which are generally not healthy anyway. Not that I disagree about pricing being shitty but you just work with what you have since cruelty is so deeply ingrained in our society it inherently requires effort to minimise it. Just like with privacy for example where you actively need to fight for it. It's just something you do. Once my current phone is on death bed I will be buying fairphone which is expensive or a similar product out of the same principle.
The beyond burgers I just bought are still 15% more expensive than premium chicken or beef burgers. I'm still waiting for the alternative I was promised.
Some people pay extra to not torture animals.
I have a hard time believing meat alternatives are more expensive to produce, but I'm open to being educated on the matter. Paying more money to not torture animals sounds noble at the surface level, but is ultimately just another corporate scam if it otherwise has cheaper production costs. I've found recipes online for making meatless burgers which mostly include very basic vegetable ingredients. I'm sure big companies like Beyond and Impossible add a bunch of filler junk to their products though.
Should be the other way around. People should pay more to eat a tortured animal.
Yeah... on a black market while getting E.coli, Salmonella and tape worms.
This is the way... if it takes so many thousands of gallons more water to make real beef, then why should it be cheaper. And if plant based meat is significantly cheaper, and tastes at least almost as good, I'll want to go for it just for budget reasons.
I've been using another "veggie Ground Round" product for ages and ages, or just shredding up and seasoning tofu or other veg protein myself. Always curious to try some new alt, though. :9
After making tofu, something about shredded tofu really saddens me.
Instead of trying to switch over to highly processed vegan product that tries to emulate beef or chicken using tons of additives and scientifically engineered flavours and textures .... why not just start eating actual wholesome vegetables and legumes with high protein content like lentils or beans.
If the cost of meat products is starting to match the cost of expensive meat substitutes ... it probably matches the cost of just eating expensive raw vegetables and beans too.
Humans have been eating high protein vegetables for centuries and it is way more healthier for you than whatever factory produced vegetable mash.
When vegans promote a whole food, plant based diet: "I will only switch when there are drop-in meat and dairy replacements"
Ok then I guess we'll develop drop-in meat replacements: "why emulate meat? So processed!"
It's amazing if you're into WFPB, it's one of the healthier diets out there. You're just not the target consumer of these meat replacements. But they're useful for some people to have a better choice. They're usually not unhealthier than the animal-based product they aim to replace (see meta analysis ).
Yep. The NOVA clowns can piss off, vegans were talking about whole foods long before they started the moral panic about UPFs.
Most legumes have always been cheaper than meat
Oh I know this one, it's pretty simple. Considering I at least try to give my meals some taste (by adding spices I feel like adding, theres no real skill or logic I use) I do realize that a lot of "western" people don't really know anything past salt and pepper, when it comes to meal preparation. At best maybe drown the food in some basic premade condiment like ketchup, mayo, etc.
So asking people to eat vegetables, just for them to turn around and say they taste bland and aren't worth it, and they don't know how to make it taste good or even try, is not going to get them to ditch meat.
Humans wanna eat stuff that satisfies more than just hunger now, you know that, unless they have absolutely no choice in what they eat. Nobody is gonna eat anything healthy when equally priced alternatives taste better and require less effort.
Salt, pepper, soy sauce, salt and herb mixes, vinegars. Yeah that covers most of it. At least the herbs I grow myself now, sage, garlic and rosemary
big "you're doing it wrong" energy
"Beyond" products taste good, and they're meat-like but don't really taste like anything that currently exists, whereas everything I've tried from Impossible is pretty much indistinguishable from meat, it's actually kind of wild.
I'm not even vegetarian (one day) but I was able to cut out red meat entirely thanks to these brands.
Problem is beef got to expensive to eat anyway. Made it way easier to cut out of the diet. I need this as cheap as chicken and pork.
Don't worry, all animal products will be going up in price a lot as a result of the oil and fertilizer crisis going on now. The real question is if the planting plans are getting shifted to food crops or if there will continue to be more feed crops, which will lead to famines in the poorer parts of the world thanks to how the markets work.
This would in some ways be good for me. I never thought I could kick the fast food addicition but a bit of price increase was all it took and heck that made it easier to waaaayyyy reduce my beef consumption (although some may debate how much the meat was vegetable based). The struggle to limit meat consumption is the thing which made me take vampire characters more seriously. I used to think it was kinda stupid and they should easily not go after humans but then I realize I would be right there going. Yeah animal blood is so bland. yuck. later though it would be. what! eight fifty for a pint of human. forget it.
After the various price hikes stuff like Chinese takeout food just stopped making sense for me. Now I just use plant based “nuggets” and use a sweet-and-sour sauce. A lot cheaper and tastes better.
Unfortunately, I'm allergic to nickel and most vegetarian protein sources give me issues. I don't eat beef very often anyways, but as someone who was a lite-vegetarian for a while, it bums me out that I had to change my diet to eat more meat/animal products.
Perhaps also Mycoprotein like what they use for Quorn products (though other ingredients around it might pose issues)? One study put it at a similar nickle content to egg whites (<6 μg/100 g) see table 4
I've read that Seitan might be better for low nickle because of the refinement compared to regular wheat products. I couldn't verify that for sure
Maybe non-animal whey and non-animal egg white products would be worth trying? They use precision fermentation to make them. I should not these are biologically identical so allergies to the animal based versions of those proteins will still likely apply here. There are more of those coming down the pipeline as well
EDIT: also quinoa too might be lower in nickle from what I'm reading?
I've started making my own tofu "mince" by shredding a block of tofu into a big cast iron pan with oil and lots of seasonings. Get it real hot--you want that Maillard reaction to give it a chewy "crust."
It does not taste like meat, but imho it's better than anything I've found off the shelf.
Unfortunately I can't eat tofu. I love it though.
Fine, I'll try it if I see it on the shelf.
Quorn bolognese for me this week then!
I like beyond beef burgers, local doesn’t sell mince yet sadly. I’m 100% up for using meat alternatives for environmental reasonings alone, the price would just be extra.
