That is great news! Beyond Meat is not the only player on the block, though.
The challenges in the alt.ag. sector lie in the development of mass production technology. From the side of the market, consumers need an extra benefit (animal cruelty free products are not enough) in order to be converting. Outside of the startups, the time to maturity is hypothesized to be 5-15 years.
Tyson is a very forward looking company, very much worried about the future of protein food supply. I had the pleasure of meeting some of their folks, and at least the top level very well outlined the problems we are going to face.
Current business model in the sector is focused on high volume production with strong attrition, little regard to animal ethics (low regulations) and consolidation among manufacturers.
Just the numbers make me shudder:
* Livestock produces 18% of greenhouse emissions
* Feed animals occupy 70% of arable land on our planet.
With the classic animal protein supply chain being almost max'ed out in terms of capacity (and energy+matter conversion effiency), we have some grim perspectives here.
Disclaimer: I work in the alt tag tech startup sector.
More fallow land would be a good thing. Poor herd management contributes greatly to desertification and reduced carbon capture. Biodiversity is harmed by loss of habit and humans killing top predators.
Well, good point, I typed my comment up fairly quickly.
It is a lot of land occupied by a very recource hungry industry and less efficient industry
e.g. you need 100x more water to make animal protein when compared to plant protein. We use 25% of our freshwater consumption for animal protein production - not even mentioning other recourses. With a growing number of people on the planet, efficiency is key.
If that water is from rain then it's a renewable resource, and if it's not used it will just flow to the sea and be wasted. There are places like Wales, with a wet climate and hilly terrain that are poorly suited to arable cultivation but ideal for livestock. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Wales
However, freeing up more land for plants means we could grow the same amount of food using less intensive cultivation techniques, eg. rotating in nitrogen-fixing crops instead of relying on energy-intensive Haber process fertilizers.
> If that water is from rain then it's a renewable resource, and if it's not used it will just flow to the sea and be wasted.
This is simply not true. A large amount of rainwater goes to (or would go to) replenishing aquifers, which we use to provide our drinking and irrigation water. Unharvested rainwater is not wasted--it replenishes our natural freshwater storage.
Additionally, not all water used is captured rainwater. Some comes from those aquifers being replenished by rainwater, and some comes from fossil aquifers, which DON'T get replenished on a human timescale and are truly non-renewable.
If all our livestock were grown in places like Wales, maybe the idea of "use it or lose it" holds true, but we've got a lot of cattle sitting atop the Ogallala Aquifer in the US, and you can find similar situations many places where we raise livestock.
It's not very tasty meat.[1] However, it compares favorably with over-processed, over-seasoned real meat, and it's way ahead of most soy-based meat-like products.
I've tasted a few bean based "chef" veggie burgers that were quite close especially malted ones that replicated some (good) meat flavors somewhat well.
I'm happy there is a non soy alternative comming as i don't touch most soy based products because they contain a lot of soy protein.
I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan just don't mind having a good and healthy alternative to be able to use if I do need to host those who are or just feel like getting of meat for a few weeks.
Soy especially unfermented soy has pretty bad health effects when consumed in any meaningful dose daily.
Soy isn't "healthy" it's not used as a replacement for food in Asia, it's mostly used in small amounts to add flavour or as a condiment, and it's almost always fermented.
In the west people use unfermented soy as replacement for many type of foods including dairy, meat and wheat in excessive amounts.
What worse is that Soy protein prevents the absorption of other proteins as it contains a fairly large amount of trypsin inhibitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypsin_inhibitor
To render soy "safe" it usually need to be heat treated to break down STI and a several potentially risky amino acids, this isn't viable with all soy products (e.g. milk) or products that already contain soy as an ingredient (you can't microwave a candy bar), and heat treating soy tends to lower it's nutritional value considerably as well as ruin the flavor and the texture in many cases.
But as stated before fermented soy products (various soy sauces, miso etc.) aren't as an issue the fermentation breaks apart most of the potentially risky stuff in soy including STI's and amino acids like Valine (which is causally linked to insulin resistance, while most foods contain valine 10g of soy protein would contain about 400mg of it), honestly the fact that most traditional soy foods are fermented to begin with probably isn't a coincidence.
The health effects of soy aren't well enough understood to say eating it has "pretty bad health effects". Some studies indicate it has positive health impact, even while some studies of specific things found in soy (and some theories about some specific things found in soy that don't have a lot of evidence to back them up, but they sound good). I think we should consider soy a suspect ingredient, but not an indicted one. I don't eat a lot of it, but I don't go far out of my way to avoid it, either.
There's just too much history of soy consumption in Japan, and too much evidence indicating that Japanese people who eat soy have longer/healthier lives than those who never eat soy, that I think there's some stuff we just don't understand about it yet...making it more complicated than simple ingredients like simple sugars (that we know are generally bad) or fiber (that we know is generally good).
I've gone back and forth on avoiding soy; these days I do prefer it fermented, but I'll eat non-fermented soy foods now and then without feeling like I'm taking a big health risk.
Anyway, I don't necessarily disagree strongly with you, and there's probably a good argument that you should prefer fermented soy foods. But, I think the science is up in the air enough to make me think maybe the "smoking" gun really isn't.
Also, black beans, and some other kinds of beans that are commonly consumed whole and without being fermented, contain more of some of the stuff that allegedly makes soy bad for you. So, if you're cutting out soy for those reasons, you also have to cut out black beans, among others. That doesn't feel like a good choice, to me...since those beans have so many healthy characteristics.
I don't eat raw black beans either in large amounts ;)
No issues with eating some soy, the issue is using soy as a food replacement for dairy, meat and wheat which results in consuming very large amounts of it.
Also non-fermented soy products in Asia are also treated either with heat or chemically (acid, salts, enzymes) which reduces the amount of the risky stuff and are more safer for consumption.
The problem in the west/mass produced food is where raw soy is used as a filler/replacement ingredient without proper consideration for pretreatment.
Also FYI traditional chinese and japanese soy milk is boiled (for a fairly lenghty duration upto 30 min) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_milk, some western brands are not, an easy test to know if it was heat treated or not is to check how much does it foam, if it foams excessively it's likely unboiled cold pressed milk (tho silicone (e is intentional) might have been added as an anti-foaming agent, so in doubt heat it up for 10 min).
I'm a bit confused about some of the stuff you're saying. Do you have any sources I could check out? I'm a vegetarian, and while I don't eat tons of soy, I'm genuinely interested because I haven't ever read about this. Soy haters usually talk about how I'm about to gain a second X chromosome or something.
I've never heard of soy milk not being cooked. From what I've read, Silk definitely cooks their milk, and so does a company called Sunrich (which has at some point been what's behind Kirkland, Costco's brand)[1]. I haven't really looked into others, but I've read that in order to remove the "bean" taste from the finished product, it requires cooking, and the longer the better. Like you said, though, if it's cooked, it's fine. I personally make my own soy milk.
You said in another reply that tofu and edemame are safe as well. According to Wikipedia, the soy protein in TVP is heated to 150-200ºC[2], which I assume is hot enough to "fix" the soy? Tempeh is fermented, so I guess that's okay too.
I suppose that basically just leaves soy protein powder (and what they're used for, e.g. protein bars) and heavily processed meat substitutes? I don't know much about the former, but given that processed food in general is typically unhealthy, I'm left to wonder if soy is the main issue, or even an issue at all.
Soy milk did not became widely adopted in Asia until they started boiling it, again heat treating.
Tofu is made by coagulating soy milk with acid or salt effectively doing the same process as fermentation/heat treatment in regards to enzymes and amino acids contained within the soy.
So, heating soy solves the problem? You reckon there are soy-based burgers that aren't heated? I don't think I've ever eaten an uncooked burger of any sort.
Heat treating it, e.g. like traditional production of soy milk (where it's brought to boil or near boil for a long duration) does, simply heating it doesn't.
A soy burger doesn't have to be cooked, it might need to be warm for taste and texture but there is no intrinsic reason why a replacement meat burger has to be grilled or cooked until the core temperature reaches the needed 54-60c like one would be cooking meat.
If you create an already ready to eat patty with large amount of untreated soy protein and unless you fully cook the burger which might not be required or even not recommended to preserve texture/flavor, and even then it's not as simple since the heat treatment process to make soy "safe" is usually longer (and at a higher temperature) than what you would get to by grilling the burger as it was meat.
There was some discussion on the Soylent thread a while back saying soy protein can cause hormonal imbalances. Not sure if I believe that to be honest.
Bodybuilders avoid it due to claims of increased oestrogen production. I haven't investigated this myself but unlikely most people are going to be adding 200+ grams of it to their diets
Not all bodybuilders do. Most, probably, but there are a number who don't believe the estrogen/soy propaganda.
If anyone's interested, I would check out this YouTuber. There are a number of them, but I really like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LItbM2FfSt0. The video is his six month review of veganism (he's been doing it for over a year now).
Anyway, I'm not a vegan or trying to promote the diet/lifestyle. I just want to make people aware that there are plenty of counterexamples[1] to the claims about soy ruining your hormones.
If it is really that bad is hard to say. There are plenty articles online that ask the question "will soy give you man boobs" and surprisingly you'll find Betteridge's law of headlines broken, as there are articles that answer this question in both affirmative and negative.
My point wasn't to defend that viewpoint, but merely to present it to parent, who wasn't aware of this being a big deal, to a lot of people.
I'm sorry if I made it sound I was promoting a stance in this matter one way or another, I merely tried to introduce this argument /viewpoint neutrally.
Just an anecdote, my mom went vegetarian consisting mostly of soy products (tofu and the like) for about a decade during which her the amount of blood she menstruated went sky high in terms of volume. She dropped the whole diet but the menstruation problem still remained until a doctor found she had a tumor in her uterus which meant she had to get a hysterectomy. I'm not sure if the soy estrogens promoted growth in the tumor (thus the excess menstrual blood problem) so I'm very cautious about eating unprocessed/untreated soy products because of that one incident.
That's your choice and I disagree. Nevertheless, my main point was that it's one person's opinion. Linking to some kind of study or survey would have been useful. Linking to some restaurant critic's opinion about not-restaurant-food is silly.
Not the OP but I have tried it. In the toaster oven and microwave, it was the best meat substitute burger that I had tried. Proud, I bought it to a cook-off with some carnist friends and there it met its nemesis: the open flame. I am not sure whether I overcooked it or if I got the wrong kind of Beyond Meat product but it was not good cooked on the grill. I finished it off with a brave face while my carnist friends, having tried a sample and soundly rejected it, looked on with glee mixed with pity. At that same event, I also tried Quorn burgers and they did ok but still not great.
This, or something like this, was bound to happen because this is the nature of business. Hopefully Beyond Meat will not disappear but instead be able to grow bigger and become better.
If these are voting shares, couldn't Tyson theoretically exercise their (albeit small) influence in favor of making Beyond Meat fail? I'm unfamiliar with safeguards against potential conflicts of interest like this, if any.
I see it a bit differently: They may be interested in integrating Beyond Meat into their distribution pipeline with this purchase in order for their investment to pay off.
And why not? Growing animals for 300days in very poor conditions while paying pesky humans to take care of them, slaughter them, slice them up and transport them.
You can just mix a couple plant-based ingredients and produce a decent burger instead at a fraction of the cost and time - it scales way better.
Then you have all those reporters with their hidden camera of what goes on in those factory farms - why do you need all that bad publicity anyway.
This is good publicity for them, cheaper to produce, healthier for humans and the environment. I cannot see a downside to this for any company or society.
Depending on the size of the investment, they may get a board seat. Many startup boards have ~7 board members including the CEO and usually a founder if those two roles aren't the same person. The board basically sets executive compensation and votes on major decisions so a bad actor would have a very hard time messing with a company. The most damage they could cause would likely be sharing the confidential strategy and financial information that they would have access to.
No, you can't act against the interests of the company as a voting shareholder (or any for that matter, you can't buy shares and dump them at a lower price repeatedly for example effectively spending money to devalue the company).
Depending on the shareholder agreement you will also be bound to additional guidelines to deal with conflict of interests and voting etiquette.
A malicious actor could probably do a lot of damage just by stalling and increasing bureaucracy without going "against the interests of the company" in an illegal way.
Not really the SHA has clauses about that (usually under the deadlock provisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock_provision), in most cases if you don't show up for a vote or intentionally block it you will be removed, additionally normally shares that you buy as an investment if they come with voting rights would come tied to a voting proxy that proxy is usually the chairman so if you don't show up for a meeting the chairman would vote on your behalf.
Pretty much there isn't that much mess you can do, the SHA will be defined to protect the company, you can't act against the interest of the company, you can't dump the shares since the other shareholders have the right of refusal and there are 101 other regulations.
You also need to remember that in most cases there is no need of a unanimous vote of all shareholders, public companies usually follow the 51% rule which means that if you control 51% of the shares you control the company.
There will not be many cases where company operate without a designated majority shareholder, this would scare of investors, the minority shareholders also don't share in any of the revenue of the company unless the company is sold or a dividend is declared so effectively minority stock is "worthless" in most cases and is only used as an investment.
If you own 49% of the company you would only ever see any money if the company is sold, or the majority decided to grant dividends and you effectively can only sell that stock to the company/majority shareholder unless they refuse it and based on the specifics of the SHA they are also allowed to block sells to other parties.
this can be a double edged sword, a company that contributes to animal suffering is profiting from the non-meat industry. but on the other hand the investment should be welcome. one compromise that may arise is the creation of a hybrid "low-meat" type product which still contributes to animal suffering but drastically disrupts the meat market.
Too bad that the good "fake" meat is milk based. Is there perhaps a way to produce milk without animals? Or at least a way to make cows produce milk without pregnancy?
Their beef grounds are quite convincing and good, IMO though their extreme leanness gives them away. I have tried the chicken strips product as well and was not impressed. The burgers did well in the toaster oven but when I tried on a grill, possibly due to my mistakenly overcooking them, they were not good. All in all, their products have been the best substitutes that I have tried so far and I like that they are soy-free and contain the ingredients to form a fairly complete protein.
I've had some mycoprotein based meat replacement products, and they were pretty good. Definitely an improvement on soy. Better yet, the patent on mycoprotein production expires this year, so expect to see more fungi-burgers in your local supermarket soon.
As an ethical V, I'm conflicted that one of the worst actors in the space would profit off of my purchase.. luckily there are many alternatives for me to buy. Perhaps they are counting on most people not knowing, or don't really understand their core market.
Are these products much better than say the morning star farm soy paddies? Because for me it's not so much texture as it is over all taste that affects what I eat. And most soy based products seem to taste so bland at least the ones we make here in the States.
I've tried most alternative meat products on the market.
Beyond Meat is fairly low on my list of favourite meat alternatives. The texture and taste just aren't quite right, sort of in the uncanny valley, if you will.
My favourite alt-meat product would have to be Quorn.
I haven't found a single company that I think gets it right across their product lines. Quorn have some really good items- I really enjoy their pork roast type item, but I sometimes find their stuff to be overly dry and the texture is a bit off. Beyond's chicken strips have a closer texture in my opinion. Match has the best option for ground beef and sausage. Sweet Earth's seitan burgers are by far the best tasting veggie burger I've had, although they are not like an actual hamburger at all.
I'm really looking forward to trying some of the newer alternatives that use plant-derived heme to increase the similarity to actual meat, but as far as I can tell those aren't widely available for purchase yet so who knows how good they'll actually end up being.
Maybe Tyson can help Beyond Meat use their distribution channels to supply more stores. I find that BM products are always out of stock in Whole Foods in certain regions.
"Branding is important"
In other words... You're trying to get people that already eat meat to eat fake meat instead of people that already eat fake meat?
I don't see why you would target a different audience.
There are some benefits to meat that will take a little more work to replicate in a lab concoction. I, personally, would prefer eating something that once lived than eating lab made imitation... I also don't like when something says it's fruit but it's really somehing fake or foods that are mislabeled.
Whole Foods Market Inc. this year began stocking them in the meat section of dozens of stores mostly in the mid-Atlantic [...]
Not being from the US, I had to look this up since it sounds like they're stocking veggie burgers in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. They're not, though. :) It's a reference to the state of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and West Virginia (although the exact definition varies, this is from the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_states).
You can also copy the article title and run a google search for it. WSJ isn't paywalled for links from search engines (Google for sure at least, not sure about others).
It seems like WSJ inspects the Referer HTTP header, so it disables the paywall if it seems that you navigated to it from a search engine. So, it is not a property of the link.
This, of course, makes sure I do not get around the paywall, since I have disabled that header in my browser. (I dislike the tracking aspect)
You can also wget the article I believe and bypass the pay wall. Haven't tried it for a few months cause its kinda a pain but it worked a few months ago when I was following the therano stories.
The challenges in the alt.ag. sector lie in the development of mass production technology. From the side of the market, consumers need an extra benefit (animal cruelty free products are not enough) in order to be converting. Outside of the startups, the time to maturity is hypothesized to be 5-15 years.
Tyson is a very forward looking company, very much worried about the future of protein food supply. I had the pleasure of meeting some of their folks, and at least the top level very well outlined the problems we are going to face.
Current business model in the sector is focused on high volume production with strong attrition, little regard to animal ethics (low regulations) and consolidation among manufacturers.
Just the numbers make me shudder:
* Livestock produces 18% of greenhouse emissions
* Feed animals occupy 70% of arable land on our planet.
With the classic animal protein supply chain being almost max'ed out in terms of capacity (and energy+matter conversion effiency), we have some grim perspectives here.
Disclaimer: I work in the alt tag tech startup sector.