If its something like its too costly then that's fine too. Let mcDonalds become bean burgers if their pricepoint with the cost of proper grassfed beef doesn't make any sense anymore.
The issue I have, is that this shouldn't cost more at all. They're literally charging more to process the food they're feeding the cows into something meat-like than it costs to actually buy the meat. If the cows are a less expensive process, then I'm just not into it.
(Aside from the fact that I can't handle legumes anyway)
Agreed but the only tangible and actionable issue I see with a fast-food burger is health. That should be addressed first and foremost. Consumption of beef is not going away otherwise. If we want to reduce beef consumption then get the government to recognize the national security risk of fast food and tax it to oblivion. Healthy beef is far more expensive. More expensive equals a reduction of consumption whereas shaming people will most certainly backfire.
If the governments started heavily taxing the fast-food grade beef then the demand will drop as a side-effect. When the demand drops we can focus on smaller, healthier regenerative farms and ranches thus reducing our dependency on fragile logistics of our current just-in-time shipping systems.
As a side note and a side benefit that I care about, this will mean less of the massive cattle ranches like Harris beef ranch in California. It is difficult to find the drone footage of these ranches because the cops will be on scene within 2 minutes of someone showing up with a drone attempting to exposing how cruel these animals are treated.
Not the person you're responding to, but their grand parent. If you look at food costs at the grocery store, it's pretty clear that a plant based burger which is cheaper than a beef based burger is possible in theory. And I actually believe that this will happen eventually, but I was responding to somebody who was stating categorically that these burgers were more environmentally friendly than beef burgers. My point was simply that that's probably not the case today.
And to speak to your point specifically: if it were simply a matter of reducing per-unit R&D costs by achieving economies of scale, they should be selling below cost so that they can grow unit volume. It's hard to achieve economies of scale when your product is more expensive than the competition.
Creating "actual beef" used to be fairly expensive, but, over the decades, companies have found out how to produce it for as cheap as possible, while still earning billions in profits, without consumers feeling as though beef is expensive. That efficiency comes with time. Plant-based meat is still in its infancy by comparison. So, even though the costs to consumers is high, the amount of profit the plant-based companies earn may be similar, or even lower than, what the beef industry earns.
Then there's Beyond itself. Striking a deal with McDonald's likely involved a lot of time and money — and then the "McPlant" product immediately failed. If you're going to convince Americans that plant-based meat is good, meeting them where they're at with fast food may seem like a good idea. But the type of people who find themselves in the McDonald's drive-thru, and the type of people who will pay extra for plant-based meat, is a tiny sliver of the theoretical burger Venn Diagram.
Now, you could call that grossly mismanaged, or you could call it the best possible shot they had at catering to a wide audience and breaking out of the niche vegan market. But the fact is, the product failed. Where can they possibly go from here to continue growth?
I agree. If the cost is low enough and it tastes, looks, smells the same, the fast-food giants will push it through. People who don't care too much that their meat is highly processed already today, probably won't care tomorrow either
They have a niche product that requires a lot of up-front investment; getting it cheaper than mass produced beef is a pipe dream. They're out to make money from price-insensitive vegetarians, which means prices will stay high. The only way this will change is with some sort of government action to raise the price of beef for consumers, but that isn't going to happen because this is a democracy; beef is popular and veggie burgers are a niche product. Even vegetarian dictators don't expend their finite political capital on issues like this.
No, the implications are even bigger than that, because the normalization and adoption will drive costs down. And when meat-substitute burgers are cheaper than meat burgers, and taste as good, they will become the default, and that is going to make a huge dent in the animal industry, which is all sorts of awesome, because the animal industry is all sorts of terrible.
Right now, I'm seeing Beyond and Impossible substitutes at burger restaurants, and it always comes with a couple of dollars surcharge, because it is more expensive. Imagine the day when the meat patty comes with a surcharge, because the substitute is cheaper!
I am always soapboxing about this, but the only way we can meaningfully address environmental or ethical concerns, is by doing it through the economy. The "best" choice has to also be the cheapest choice, because then people will as if by magic choose that most of the time, unlike when you only have people's conscience to motivate them, then the wallet still rules most of the time.
You're foolishly projecting ideology and personal beliefs into somewhere so far removed from the consumer that it simply won't matter.
Commodities buyers don't care who's corn is ethical or who's corn is unethical. They don't care who's ground beef is manly and who's isn't. It all comes down to cost per results at the end of the day. Resource usage is just a part of that calculation. No different than the cost of shipping.
If McDonalds and Walmart can cut their existing beef with fake plant beef or lab beef without hurting their bottom line (by making their products less attractive to consumers) they will.
Will there be people who try and capture the high end market with some ideologically themed marketing in the meantime? Of course. But make no mistake, the long term goal for these new synthetic meat (both plant meat and lab meat) producers is not the high end market. It's the thousands of reefer cars that put that house brand 80/20 on a store shelf near you. Pandering to whatever the premium consumer wants to hear until you can make your product cheap enough and good enough to make real money is just a necessary part of bootstrapping that.
Putting the McDouble back on the dollar menu with the help of synthetic beef is what societal progress looks like.
There's really no reason other than the "feel good" marketing that this should cost MORE than actual beef. As long as that's the case, it's more of a "pacify the woke" thing than a "make the world better" thing.
"And personally, I'm willing to pay extra for lab-grown."
I believe this mindset amongst thoughtful consumers like yourself only do harm. Like with other trendy foods that get popularized for health or whatever reason, it incentivizes the producers to raise the prices and when consumers like yourself accept that price, it sends a signal to them. The product then becomes too expensive for regular normal people to afford, so only wealthier families can afford to eat them and get those health benefits. If it is imperative for us to make healthy and sustainable diets more widespread, we must strive to make it as accessible as possible. Same with the beyond burger stuff or any other vegetarian/vegan products.
"I'd switch in a heartbeat if vegan food is cheaper, healthier and as tasty or tastier"
duhhh you'd be stupid not to at that point. Until we get there the consumer needs to signal big corporations that demand exists and McDonald's adding plant based options is a huge step. Every burger sold will contribute to encourage more companies to offer vegan options, even cheese
Convincing meat eaters to convert is going to be hard but just getting McDonalds to make it special on their menu could make a vast number give it a go and once they find it to be just as good or even better, and eventually cheaper, then a good portion of that resistance will have been overcome.
McDonalds gets hit disproportionately by anti-capitalists and environmentalists and is always trying to improve their green credentials so I'm sure they'll be working on their own recipe.
Beyond Meat just arrived in our market a few months ago and while the product is fine, its price is absurdly expensive.
To produce it's purported benefits, Beyond Meat needs to adopt the Coca-Cola / Mcdonalds approach - license the tech / brand to local franchisees for local expansion and utilize the local agri sector for raw materials.
Show me an insect burger that costs the same as a beef burger and I'll gladly buy it. Alternatively - cut subsidies to meat producers, which will raise prices for animal meat, so the insect burger can be competitive.
AFAIK, so far only cricket protein bars exist and they are sold at a huge premium ($4 vs $2) compared to whey protein based bars.
As a consumer, I'm just not interested in paying double for an alternative. Never mind that the alternative may not even taste as good.
Cost. As soon as this is materially cheaper than meat it will become the 'filler' used on so many burgers, taco places etc. and they'll do it without telling customers. Then so many people who would otherwise 'not like this stuff' have to internalize the fact 'they are already eating it widespread'. And even more directly, 40% of consumers are extremely price sensitive (think dollar store) and will buy the cheapest thing making 'real meat' a luxury.
I'm not against meat but I do view 'vegetarian strategic path to meat elimination' as entirely economic.
People care more about their money than anything that's how it will happen in my view.
That said - if it tasted 'really good' I don't mind at all now and again personally and I feel probably most people feel that way as well. If I had burgers once every two weeks and 1/3 of them were 'good vegan' I would fall into just considering it 'another choice in the menu' type of thing, which I believe a lot of folks will go for.
IMHO, this sort of thing is not really going to be a consumer-driven change.
If the commercials for meat alternatives are compelling enough even in the face of lobbies and subsidies, capitalism will drive the big fast food chains to market these more aggressively at more attractive price points and nudge consumer preferences in that direction.
the economic argument has always been the strongest in my eyes, and it's unstoppable. animals are a huge liability health wise, pollution wise, environment wise, activism wise, logistic wise, etc. most companies don't care about all that stuff at the surface level, but it all translates into dollar signs, which they do care about.
as soon as the economic-taste-weirdness function reaches a certain point, i'll expect you'll see these cheap fast food options convert more and more fractions of their products (right now many use fillers already) to fake meat, eventually replacing it entirely alongside offering reduced prices for these products, while leaving meat generally as a higher priced option signaling disposable income (sort of like Argentinian beef or w/e is today)
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