Fake meat is already a clearly superior replacement for more dubious meat dishes like "breakfast sausage. Though there is an irony for the companies making the best fake meat: It's an off-ramp from meat. I find I eat less meat, real or fake. Maybe that's because fake meat does a good job satisfying a craving. I'm much more selective: Bison instead of beef burgers, salmon instead of chicken. You don't have to eliminate meat to get lots of environmental and health upside if you change the way people think of meat as part of their diet.
Cheap meat was a quality-of-life goal for many governments, pushed by the meat industry. That went way out of balance and negatively affects health and the environment. If tasty and nutritious fake meat gets down to the price of good quality burger meat, it will be a tipping point with many benefits.
it seems inevitable that fake meat will reach a texture and taste level that's "good enough" for fast food titans to offer alongside the normal, bargain (dollar menu ish) type stuff. if you add in the economic arguments - fake meat being way cheaper logistically i'm guessing and only going to get cheaper, perhaps order of magnitude levels so - then i would wager that the lower-end options will be the fake meat stuff (which those of "lesser means" might switch to consuming) whereas the "real meat" becomes the more affluent option.
Costs are multitudes higher for synthetic meat right now. Some of these decision on paper may sound good, but ultimately will people be able to afford it with all of the environmentally friendly and sustainable boxes checked was my point.
Do you like the taste of fake meat?
I look forward to the fake meat getting cheaper than the real meat so it's economically less attractive to pass off real meat as fake, however unlikely someone doing that would be in the first place.
If any of the planet saving meat substitute promises are true, such a fake meat patty would cost a tenth of the beef equivalent and it would dominate the market.
I read somewhere you would need 25 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of beef, ergo one could potentially produce 25 times the amount of substitute.
Obviously that isn't true and such a patty is a specialized product of various highly processed plant matter.
It is around 2-4 times the price of meat equivalent and to me it is no surprise, that people aren't willing to pay more for an inferior product.
Now people say, well if we all had bought it, mass production would already reduced the price significantly.
I don't think people are paying new cooking methods and food processing reactors here.
There are more people involved, more complex ingredients, more processes, more shipping and more energy.
That is why it is much more expensive.
Would a real meat eater rather eat a $5 burger made from (well you really don't want to know what burger meat is made from) or a $5 fake-steak sandwich that looks and tastes like steak?
The initial market is going be fashionable fake meat for Wholefoods/Trader-Joes consumers. But assuming this is eventually cheaper than meat, keeps longer, has less problems with bugs/contamination/spoilage, is quicker easier to shape into burgers plus lower fat and healthier then fast food chains are going to offer it.
But does that change if the fake is $3 and the real one is $15? I think a lot of people in the front end of these startups trying to create almost identical to meat and dairy products are looking at that possibility in the not so far future as to why they will be successful. As opposed to something like a boca burger that is more intended to fit inside a hamburger bun as opposed to being exactly like meat.
I say this as someone who hasn't eaten meat for well over a decade and a really close meat substitute sounds gross.
"fake meat" is processed food. That, IMHO, is the main difference over just eating fresh vegetables. It's more expensive because of that, and introduces externalities and risks.
I see "fake meat" as a temporary crutch for people transitioning to vegetarianism.
It's a tool that can be used to transition from a bad thing to a less bad thing or even a good thing.
Maybe in the future the Beyond Meats of the world are cheaper and clearly better for the environment than meat, but for now they are good tools to prove the doubters that not every meal needs to have a dead animal in it.
We are at the point where an average non-meat option in a burger is better than a bad meat burger. The alternative options can't beat a premium burger though - not yet.
Despite not eating meat for a few years now, I like the flavour of meat. So I personally welcome fake meats any time of the week, as long as they aren't prohibitly expensive to the environment.
Huge problem with the vegan meat replacements is that they're a lot more expensive than beef, around $7/lb vs ground beef at $3/lb. Like with coal vs solar, for imitation meat to win the market it needs to get less expensive than real meat (and taste as good).
Fake meat has never been so available. There are several restaurants that serve it that are not your "we are explicitly vegan" restaurants, burger king served some, and all major supermarkets have it in stock in the freezers right next to normal meat. However, the price is still unattainable. A few days ago i bought patties to make burgers and meat was about 1 euro/100g and plant meat was about twice as expensive. For as long as it is more expensive, people are going to buy real meat, unless they're trying it (in terms of taste i think it's fine) or vegan.
The big issue is that fake meat is more expensive, maybe less healthy and not as tasty as real meat. It's just much better to just find a tasty vegetarian alternatives. It turns out that after you stop eating meat most people stop craving it after a while. If you're going to go vegetarian, there's no reason to deal with fake meats.
Yes, they are more sustainable but they are in no way replacements. I've had a few but I wouldn't make it a habit to replace meat with it. But I would surely replace one of my meals with 100% vegetables if it was easy to get and tasty. One that comes to mind is a bean and rice burrito with salsa. It's delicious. That's the type of replacements that should be pushed, not fake meats.
The idea that fake meat is so much better is crazy. It's just a new way to make a buck.
Incidentally, as a meat eater I'd stop eating it tomorrow if this was the case (bring on the healthy and eco-friendly bacon, sausages and steak!).
Substitutes like Quorn mince in a chili are already more than acceptable to me.
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