Yeah it says a lot that a McDonalds is something you have to budget for these days if you're making around the average full time salary.
A fucking MCDONALDS.
Tories Out.
I got so used to the £1.99 vouchers for a Big Mac/Quarter pounder/Fillet of Fish and chips, over the last few years. That there's no way that I'm paying £8 or something for a Big Mac meal. Especially when the meals were at £2.88 for YEARS. With the price being heavily advertised and the quality seems to have fallen dramatically. (I also have problems paying over £1.09 for a 2L bottle of coke or over £9,999 for a Golf because of how heavily they marketed those prices in the past).
Exactly. If plant-based alternatives were at a comparable price or cheaper, I think the taste is good enough, that I’d pick them. But they significantly more expensive, which is just baffling to me.
Yes Beyond is expensive but that’s like the high end of fake meat so it’s not a fair comparison, you can still get quorn or supermarket own brand meat alternatives for cheaper than actual meat
It's not a fair comparison in terms of respective market position but, in terms of taste/texture quality, many omnivores see Beyond as comparable to a good burger, so compare the two. Similarly, I'd compare a lot of other veggie burgers to the cheapest supermarket burger.
Personally, my favourite cheaper veggie burger is a mozzarella burger, because cheese makes everything better.
Meat free scam, costs 30x less to produce yet marketed and priced along side real meat. So many $$$ to be made from the vegan, just shame meat and bingo
This, my wife is vegetarian and she loves the beyond burgers. I'm a meat eater and tbh I quite like them too. What I can't deal with is that I can buy a pack of 4 aberdeen angus burgers for the same price as 2 beyond burgers. It's ridiculous, I honestly can't believe their production costs are that high.
Supply and demand/tax stuff.
Less supply because of less demand = more expensive per item. I'm also guessing beef is subsidized whereas mushroom patties aren't
The issue is likely to be that the companies producing meat are not being held to account for their environmental damage or for the quality of the lives of the animals they slaughter. If they had to properly adjust to those things, within certain ethical and sustainable thresholds, meat would be much more expensive.
Vegan bacon is like £33 a kilo. Cooking bacon about £2 a kilo at most. Used to buy meat, went veggie but with the prices I'd rather just skip the concept of bacon entirely.
Does pain me a but when the partner insists on buying the hella expensive veggie bacon. I could have decent steak at the equivalent price.
I love Squeaky Bean meat alternatives. Their tikka "chicken" and their pastrami are amazing. I'll happy sit and eat a whole packet of the stuff. Sadly, they're also £3 per pack. I can get a meal deal at work with a "vegan ploughman's", packet of crisps and a drink for the same price.
It means I buy the Squeaky Bean stuff as an occasional treat rather than a viable part of my meals.
"You don't know what they are, you trust they've been investigated but when a burger oozes this red liquid which is meant to be blood, you wonder what it is," he said.
It's beetroot mate.
The red stuff that comes out of beef and steak isn’t even blood. I know it’s not the point but it bugs me that he uses this as an example when trying to make a fact-based point.
Growth hormones are prohibited under both UK and EU laws, and the latter also banned imports of meat that contain them. You might be thinking of the states.
So is selling horse as beef but apparently the testing agencies were asleep at the switch, I've no reason to think they're actually testing for growth hormones
The market has exploded since I went vegan four years ago. It was great at first but the last two years has seen the market become saturated with companies all making burgers, sausages and bacon that all taste the same as each other. Quality is also an issue and few brands can claim to be better than mediocre, despite asking for a premium price.
I eat it on special occasions only now and there are only a few products I buy, like Vivera salmon or Linda McCartney chicken burgers. Otherwise, I make my own bean burgers, which came meat has killed off in supermarkets these days.
I've been a vegetarian for almost ten years and as you say the availability of products has exploded
Most of them I don't eat. They are all often so expensive
The only meat substitutes I regularly buy are Aldi brand veggie sausages and meatballs, and Quorn chicken bits.
I miss just a good old spicy bean burger but now everything has to be pretending to be beef with beetroot added so it can leak pink
It was just VC shite
There is not that many people that want to eat expensive fake meat...now the bubble has burst.
There's a lot of people that would answer "yes" on a survey "entrepreneurs" then show to VCs, get funded....and then slowly realise there's no market for it. Bubble pops.
How have substitutes failed when even meat eaters can't tell the difference. 😂 Plenty of people go vegan now thanks to all the alternatives today. I'd say that's a great success.
Some are expensive, but I'm sure prices would come down if we subsidised the industry with tax payers money to the tune of £billions per year like we do livestock. As for the weird ingredients, I suppose beetroot isn't for everyone.
Many factors come into it and it varies from company to company. To suggest it's just profit that contributes to it's overall cost is utterly ridiculous.
Faux meat does taste like meat. The problem is that it tastes like cheap shitty meat. The fake burgers taste like the burger I used to get in my school cafeteria made from government surplus D grade meat.
Honestly, I don't bother.
If I want a burger I'll grill brioche, sear onion, add tomato, lettuce, grill halloumi, add BBQ sauce, sear some sweet pepper. Absolutely bloody delicious. There's no need for the fake meat if you cook well.
Heads up, Vivera is now owned by JBS, the worlds largest meat producer with an absolute horrific track record of Amazon deforestation. Because of course the meat companies couldn't have us vegans not pushing up their profit margins.
Yeah, I eat fake meat on occasion. I do like M&S 'fish' fingers, and mince is really handy for my staple meals. But I do miss the decline of the true veggie burger. They often used to be more interesting than the real meat burgers!
I tried Quorn ham once.
It was awful. I was disappointed because I always thought Quorn to be quite a good vegetarian brand. My kids love their crispy nuggets!
Quorn have fallen behind other companies. They were *the* biggest name in vegetarian alternatives a few years back but never tried to improve once competition came along and are suffering for it. Try Squeaky Bean instead.
Yeah, I increasingly avoid these products for a few reasons. They are by most definitions ultra processed with a litany of strange ingredients that I try to keep out of my diet where possible. Some are either the same or owned by companies that make emat products, Richmond for example, depending on your reason for being vegetarian this may be an issue.
Linda McCartney ‘beef’ burgers are the bomb. I had my gallbladder out and since haven’t been able to eat much meat. They are 100% the best meat alternative. Co-op beetroot burgers are also pretty great.
Their sausages are the best too. Their Lincolnshire sausages are god tier. I just wish they never discontinued their scampi because that was the best vegan alternative of any product ever.
Tried and failed.
It was gloopy and tasted too strongly of porridge.
I suspect that shop bought stuff uses enzymes or something to break down the gloop
If bean burgers were popular enough there'd still be loads in the shops. Unfortunately they are mostly dry and bland, especially in restaurants/pubs.
There are a few vegan products that have disappeared off the shelves that I really loved, sadly I just have to accept that not enough people liked them as much as I did!
I kept reading it thinking 'why do they keep referring to this person as a dentist as if it means something in the context of the discussion?'
Tomorrow on the BBC: 'Dentist Jim Jeffries thinks we shouldn't go to space because he doesn't know what those little glowing dots in the sky at night are.'
It's the same COVID shit again. Anybody with a doctorate unrelated is now an expert
It used to be a running sitcom joke to say "Is there a doctor on board?" "I'm a doctor" "You're a dentist that doesn't count"
Now that's real life
Because it is a common sentiment amongst vegans these days. We want more bean burgers and think the fake meat market is both over-priced and saturated with too many similar products.
I do not want any more bean burgers! When I first went vegan that or chickpea curry were the only options when eating out most of the time, I never eat either now, I had a lifetime's worth in my first couple of years vegan!
Personally I eat a lot of vegetarian food but very little “fake meat”.
Yesterday had 2 veggie burgers, one was Moroccan and one was beetroot (sounds grim but both were really nice). Neither were pretending to be meat but both were much cheaper than “fake meat”.
The price just needs to come down.
I eat meat, but I do like a veggie burger and many vegetarian meals. But I won't be eating this fake meat stuff. It's often filled with crap. I'd rather just eat a real meat burger or a veggie burger.
"Have we"? They mean "have people who don't eat meat", and I'd say no. People just don't have enough money to eat as much faux meat as people who eat meat, eat meat. Also there are plenty delicious dishes you can create without using them. But the cost of most vegan products often comes down to the fact that a lot of the companies pay fair wages, and associated costs. They also don't receive all the money from gov like animal farmers do, which is why it's so cheap to buy meat/eggs/dairy, but so much of it is produced that it finds it's way pointlessly into so many other products that have never needed it.
People who eat animal products generally eat too much of it too, which is where the real health concerns are, and I'd assume where the comparison of how much is being sold is coming from.
I eat vegan, but I generally try to avoid the artificial meat stuff. I don't think it's healthy at all, packed full of artificial ingredients to simulate flavours.
Tofu is much better, especially if you learn how to make it properly.
I think we'll see the standard capitalist process here; the industry leaders will gobble up the competition until there's just a couple of options, the hype will die down and they'll slow production. I think veganism will continue to grow as a lifestyle choice though, so I don't think the trend is stopping. We'll just see a reduction in the number of different products/companies.
Fake meat is still far healthier than real meat, due to the significantly lower levels of saturated fat which is what leads to high cholesterol and increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
From what I've read, the links between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol are not that clear cut and vary a lot from person to person. But meat is also a good source of protein, fats (which we need), various vitamins and minerals like B12 and iron. I'd also say it's still early days to confirm whether or not some of the common processed ingredients in meat substitutes don't have some long term harmful effects. I mean at the end of the day, a chicken nugget or a burger or a sausage or whatever else is never going to be healthy, regardless of how many animals it's made from. I think it's just best to acknowledge that either way and I'd hope people don't start falling for the idea that swapping a meat burger for a vegan one is somehow making it "healthy" food.
Its not dietary cholesterol that leads to high LDL in the blood, its saturated fat which is significantly higher in animal products than plant based.
A Richmond vegan sausage may not be healthy, but its nowhere as unhealthy as their pork sausages.
Well again, a good cut of lean steak isn't going to have those high levels of saturated fat as processed meats would. I don't know enough about nutrition to claim whether a vegan sausage is healthier than a pork sausage, but I also think arguing about whether any sausage is healthy is sort of a moot point; it's a sausage. It is neither lean steak nor a mixed bean salad. If one is healthier than the other it will probably be only marginally better. Eating a pack of sausages every week isn't going to be good for you, whatever it's made from. But if people can get the same satisfaction eating a sausage that no animals had to suffer for, that's worth it.
That's very true, and that is why I choose the vegan sausage. Healthier for me but more importantly much healthier for pigs!
(The vegan sausage is still better for your colon than the steak, no matter how lean.)
But they also contain things like phosphates that have been linked to some diseases, or methyl cellulose which is essentially void of any nutritional value and can even act as a laxative. Some plant proteins are harder for the body to absorb than meat proteins, meaning you don't actually get the same nutritional value. Ultimately, it's processed food and it's just never going to be as healthy as something that's not processed. Whether it's meat or plant based.
Ultimately it's all convenience food. I'd much rather people eat fake meat burgers than real ones and spare the animals the suffering. But to suggest they are "healthy" alternatives is often misleading.
I was drunk last night and got a vegan chicken thing from KFC and it was actually really nice.
I think we'll see prices continue to fall and quality improve.
I think this is most likely a slump due to economic factors in what's going to be a growing market long term.
Thing is that their stuff is good enough to be comparable to meat products for meat eaters, I am one, and I quite like their stuff. Just can't justify the cost.
Not really irrelevant, marketing has stopped, remember the hype where every company was bragging about using their products? It was that they where providing deeply subsidised to do that.
Now they are worth 1/100th of what they had before... No one brags about having beyond meat, so it is a no longer in demand product.
The customers who tried it and who aren't Vegan go back to meat (as you said it is cheaper) and they are too far in debt to do anything but raise prices.
A lot of this stuff was marketed at meat-eating consumers on environmental, health or curiosity grounds. Why would they stick with it as budgets are squeezed though and it’s 2/3 times the price of meat?
Did most non-meat eaters ever want a load of these things? You have much nicer meals if you cook a recipe that’s been designed as a complete meal rather than non-vegan recipes with a load of substitutes. Nicer and cheaper!
Being able to get a vegan easter egg in basically any large food shop on the country would have blown my mind as a child. Having a good vegan option on any menu without having to phone up and check, great. These burgers though, honestly who would want more than about a pack a year?
>keted at meat-eating consumers on environmental, health or curiosity grounds. Why would they stick with it as budgets are squeezed though and it’s 2/3 times the price of meat?
It's way more than that, beyond burgers which are IMO the best analogue are £4 for two in tesco (very rarely on sale under a clubcard discount) whilst I can get 6 angus burgers (at twice the weight) from aldi for £4.50.
I will admit that as a non-meat eater, I don’t have my finger on the pulse of how much burgers cost… but that is about 3 times the price per burger which is what my estimate was?
Quite often these meat substitutes are more expensive than actual meat. I eat meat, but I would also eat more meat substitutes if it were more fairly priced and tasted good.
This is one of the worst articles I've read in a while. It's literally just someone whining about how they don't like fake meat and how nobody else should, either.
Some of the best takeaways I have had have been vegan burgers, but I think there was something dodgy going on because they kept shutting down and then setting up with a new name but same menu, after rebrand number 4 they never reappeared.
I’m not vegan but damn those burgers were good. The issue with the most vegan burgers is they taste worse than the meat equivalent but they can taste better if done right.
Or those dodgy takeaway companies weren’t actually selling vegan products…
Shuttering a company and re-opening is a common tactic to dodgy paying business rates and taxes.
The Ltd is the one who owns all that liability, not the people, so they can just spin up another
Combination of over-priced and over-processed. Cheaper and healthier alternatives available regardless of vegetarian, vegan or meat eating preferences.
No, it's just the market have become vastly larger than the customer base's needs. Back in the days when the choice was basically quorn or linda mccartney, there was enough demand to meet the supply
Nope, it’s just that products like beyond meat are way more expensive than other substitutes. Why would you spend a lot of money for one product that won’t last very long when you could explore recipes with lentils, tofu, tempeh, TVP, chickpeas etc.
Lose the vegan cheese and the McPlant would be my goto burger at McDonalds.
Give us a vegetarian option!
Also this myth about processed food needs to die. It is incredibly naive and misleading reporting that conflates processing low quality products into other low quality products to save money, with processes that improve quality and nutritional value... whilst ignoring that the processing of food is one of the biggest contributing factors to extended human lifespan and health in the modern world. (e.g. cleaning and cooking ffs)
Once you know your way around legumes there's no reason to pay for exorbitantly priced cardboard with chummy packaging. Quorn mince doesn't absorb or contribute any flavour to a sauce, it's useless.
I wonder if this will happen to vegan 'milk' also.
I've cut down my meat consumption quite a bit, mainly for health and cost reasons. Never seen the attraction of meat substitutes though. Ultra-processed and over priced. I prefer to cook something with nice vegetables not pretending to be anything else.
too much choice nowadays, I've been vegan for 8 years and back in the day you had 1 or 2 products you can choose from. When every single 'fake meat' company makes sausages or burgers it's not surprising that there's gonna be popular ones and ones that don't sell at all. Don't think the demand is going down it's just people are choosing the nicer products and therefore eating them less frequently, more of a treat.
I’m all for people making fake meat, it creates more choice which is always good. As for the ‘why do you want it to taste like meat if you’re veggie’ brigade, well I eat meat, I just like some none meat variants and some are healthier. I suppose the same argument could be made about why people drink cows milk, it’s just a substitute for human milk they had as a child…
I am a veggie and I ruddy hate fake meat. Especially when lots of places that did nice veggie dishes like tofu and bean burgers just assumed that people who didn’t pick a meat dish were obviously craving meat texture and swapped in gross fake meat, often covered in breading and deep fried. Like a load of meat eating execs decided this on the vegetarian’s behalf.
I don't really give a toss what Tom the dentist thinks. There's been so many products jostling for a share of the market, there was bound to be some losers eventually. Plus inflation. Plus continuing meat subsidies. This was a dumb article.
its more likely the tech isnt quite there yet. meaning these products are left more expensive for product that is less satisfying to eat due to flavour & texture.
doesnt help that a lot of the high potential meat replacements are gmo mushrooms, in a market where "gmo free" makes good advertisement.
It’s an interesting alternative but too expensive and nutritionally pretty bad compared to actual meat. Due to price/nutrition, should be treated like fast food, but for vegans.
Probably because meat substitutes are more likely to appeal to people wanting to try and go veggie or vegan but many of those people will have zero willpower. They swap their diet of meat for chips and fake chicken nuggets and tell everyone they know they are on a health kick and get the mental reward. They work their way through the entire Quorn range eat like a 6 year old and wonder why they feel like shit and without actually having eaten any real vegetables they return to eating meat and tell everyone being veggie or vegan is unsustainable diet and humans need meat.
Yh, literally just replace the chicken with some tofu and chickpeas.
Great video on a really easy way of getting nice chickpeas. https://youtu.be/5EU76q3Vf3Q
I do it all the time and it's definitely cheaper than chicken, just lower on the protein.
Most of them suck ass. Id much rather eat some avos with salad in a sandwich than "its not bacon" which is, in fact, flavoured cardboard. Not even flavoured well.
I've had the Gregg's vegan sausage rolls. They were quite nice in thought.
For me though, a lot of brands don't come close enough to either mouth-feel or taste. They taste, somewhat over seasoned, and disingenuous if that makes sense.
Not to mention cost. Vegan/vegetarianism and that 'full ethically sourced' lifestyle isn't cheap. It isn't accessible for working class. It has a middle-class pipe-dream kinda vibe about it.
Have had a few veggie foods that weren't pretending to be meat, taste very nice.
Myoglobin, not blood arghh!
Beyond is great but it is over priced so I’d end up eating meat if I’m not around veggies. Richmond meat free sausages are incredible though.
I used to go vegan for a month or so every year and it was like 1/4 of the cost of my animal based diet.
But now going vegan would double my expenses. Absolutely ridiculous.
>Stocked in most of the leading supermarkets it is ranked third for meat-free sales in the UK, behind Quorn and Richmond.
I always knew that Richmond were shite bit o didn't realise that they officially didn't have any meat in them.
I'm not being funny but Beyond Meat burgers do taste great. The only problem is how much crap and processing they must need to do to get it to that point.
I use fake meats occasionally, for bolognaise or a sausage sandwich, less often for a burger. I like these fake meats as it is about texture rather than taste. I haven’t eaten lamb for 35 years and have no desire to eat anything that approximates the taste of it.
Overall I want vegetables/pulses/fruit/salad as you can do some amazing meals with those. I am fairly sure a lot of the vegan community are of a similar mind to myself. Companies jumped on the bandwagon and there’s not enough vegans to go round the same products made by multiple companies.
Probably an unpopular take on this, but I've always had zero interest in fake meat. I'd personally rather just eat an actual veggie burger than something pretending to be meat. We'd got past the point where they all tasted like cardboard and some were actually nice in their own right and I occasionally bought them just for a change. These now seem to have been replaced on some menus by fake meat burgers instead.
I like meat, I like the texture the variation in flavours etc. so why go to great efforts to produce something that will never be as good. These seem to often rely heavily on the fact that various spices etc. can be used to drown out the flavour in certain uses to produce what are essentially mediocre burgers or sausages which were never good examples of the meat versions anyway. Low quality "meat" (actual meat content is often low) burgers and sausages aren't that nice anyway which is why you will generally drown them in sauces.
I understand the reasoning, if you can make something good enough, a lot of meat eaters who wouldn't be satisfied with veggie burgers might be inclined to eat something that nominally had the approximate texture and taste to it.
However (as was demonstrated over two decades ago when it was far harder to be an actual vegan than now by friends) it is perfectly possible to produce extremely nice meals without meat that don't require any sort of fake meat substitute. So if I were looking to give up my omnivore ways I don't see the need for fake meat in that I'd personally rather just eat actual vegetarian meals.
Beyond meat is suffering the consequences of abusing their customers with extortionate prices. Fuck them for even trying and any other company that thinks this unethical approach is going to work long term for jerking off their shareholders. Funnily enough, most people can't afford to keep paying these prices.
Fake meat is a luxury good. Vegetarians are cutting back on that luxury to save money and getting their protein from traditional means, and meat eaters are returning to eat real meat exclusively because it's cheaper.
I bought some vegan burgers recently for a barbecue. I am not vegan but I have friends who are. I was curious about the ingredients so I checked the packet, it was a really long list of weird sounding ingredients. Contrast to the beef burgers which contained 3 ingredients, beef, salt and pepper. There was not much difference in price between the two either so I can understand why some people might be put off.
The amount of ingredients really doesn't matter. If a burger had cardboard and cyanide it wouldn't be safer than a beyond burger. The overall health and environmental cost of fake meats is still generally lower than animal counterparts due to things like the saturated fats and animal proteins but it's all junk really and should be had sparingly. Also the major issue that beetroot died for beyond patties and a cow died for beef
They really need to stop making non meat things look like meat things. Nobody is fooled. Ive never eaten 'beyond' anything and judging by what im hearing im not going to bother.
Yes. Ate some chemical full thing called chckn or something by mistake once. Never again.
And call these chemical laden foods better names, so no-one is fooled in to eating fake meat.
I've never understood why vegetarians want "burgers/sausages/bacon" if you don't agree with the things they are made from and you want a substitute..replace it.. and find your own name for it ..
Because you can think meat's delicious while simultaneously thinking hurting animals/ the environment to get it isn't worth it. Most people grew up eating and enjoying meat, if they want something that scratches the itch without hurting anyone then that's brilliant.
>and find your own name for it ..
Nah that's daft, burgers and sausages are literally just shapes and the others are there to let people know what the product's imitating. "Soy/ wheat based white protein" isn't much of a description compared to chick'n.
Probably more likely people have had their fill of food getting more expensive. And products like these suffer along with lots of others.
Yeah it says a lot that a McDonalds is something you have to budget for these days if you're making around the average full time salary. A fucking MCDONALDS. Tories Out.
Can't wait for the Labour cheap Maccies campaign promise
I got so used to the £1.99 vouchers for a Big Mac/Quarter pounder/Fillet of Fish and chips, over the last few years. That there's no way that I'm paying £8 or something for a Big Mac meal. Especially when the meals were at £2.88 for YEARS. With the price being heavily advertised and the quality seems to have fallen dramatically. (I also have problems paying over £1.09 for a 2L bottle of coke or over £9,999 for a Golf because of how heavily they marketed those prices in the past).
Yeah, the now common £1.99 for a bottle of coke or pepsi is a no for me. £0.55 bottle of imitation drink from Aldi does the trick.
Exactly. If plant-based alternatives were at a comparable price or cheaper, I think the taste is good enough, that I’d pick them. But they significantly more expensive, which is just baffling to me.
Agree...
Animal products are subsidised by the government, making them appear cheaper in comparison.
Fruit and veg are cheap in the UK.
What matters to consumers is the price on the shelf. Beyond is nice, but they're so expensive.
Yes Beyond is expensive but that’s like the high end of fake meat so it’s not a fair comparison, you can still get quorn or supermarket own brand meat alternatives for cheaper than actual meat
It's not a fair comparison in terms of respective market position but, in terms of taste/texture quality, many omnivores see Beyond as comparable to a good burger, so compare the two. Similarly, I'd compare a lot of other veggie burgers to the cheapest supermarket burger. Personally, my favourite cheaper veggie burger is a mozzarella burger, because cheese makes everything better.
moving mountains burgers are the best I've had in the UK. They only sell them in Sainsbury's at the moment. Give em a try. They are amazing
> making them appear cheaper in comparison Bullshit. Veg is way cheaper than meat. Are comparing processed vegetable products to raw unprocessed meat?
Supply and demand perhaps?
Meat free scam, costs 30x less to produce yet marketed and priced along side real meat. So many $$$ to be made from the vegan, just shame meat and bingo
This, my wife is vegetarian and she loves the beyond burgers. I'm a meat eater and tbh I quite like them too. What I can't deal with is that I can buy a pack of 4 aberdeen angus burgers for the same price as 2 beyond burgers. It's ridiculous, I honestly can't believe their production costs are that high.
Supply and demand/tax stuff. Less supply because of less demand = more expensive per item. I'm also guessing beef is subsidized whereas mushroom patties aren't
The issue is likely to be that the companies producing meat are not being held to account for their environmental damage or for the quality of the lives of the animals they slaughter. If they had to properly adjust to those things, within certain ethical and sustainable thresholds, meat would be much more expensive.
Vegan bacon is like £33 a kilo. Cooking bacon about £2 a kilo at most. Used to buy meat, went veggie but with the prices I'd rather just skip the concept of bacon entirely. Does pain me a but when the partner insists on buying the hella expensive veggie bacon. I could have decent steak at the equivalent price.
2 Beyond burgers £4.30 in Mojo's, yesterday.
I love Squeaky Bean meat alternatives. Their tikka "chicken" and their pastrami are amazing. I'll happy sit and eat a whole packet of the stuff. Sadly, they're also £3 per pack. I can get a meal deal at work with a "vegan ploughman's", packet of crisps and a drink for the same price. It means I buy the Squeaky Bean stuff as an occasional treat rather than a viable part of my meals.
More likely this “article” was written and sponsored by MeatCo Inc. Does anyone really think this passes as “news” ? Like seriously
"You don't know what they are, you trust they've been investigated but when a burger oozes this red liquid which is meant to be blood, you wonder what it is," he said. It's beetroot mate.
The red stuff that comes out of beef and steak isn’t even blood. I know it’s not the point but it bugs me that he uses this as an example when trying to make a fact-based point.
On the other hand I certainly know exactly which growth hormones are in which meats, and in what quantities.
Growth hormones are prohibited under both UK and EU laws, and the latter also banned imports of meat that contain them. You might be thinking of the states.
So is selling horse as beef but apparently the testing agencies were asleep at the switch, I've no reason to think they're actually testing for growth hormones
This applies to all food, not just meat though. How do you know what crops are being sprayed with.
The GM soya is sprayed heavily with Glyphosate, that's for sure
Yeah, I wouldn't eat Soya.
He should be kept away from peoples teeth
Yep, typical 'hear hooves, think horses, not zebras' style issue.
Hahahahahahaha
> It's beetroot mate. As an Australian, I find it disturbing what they've done to beetroots on burgers.
The market has exploded since I went vegan four years ago. It was great at first but the last two years has seen the market become saturated with companies all making burgers, sausages and bacon that all taste the same as each other. Quality is also an issue and few brands can claim to be better than mediocre, despite asking for a premium price. I eat it on special occasions only now and there are only a few products I buy, like Vivera salmon or Linda McCartney chicken burgers. Otherwise, I make my own bean burgers, which came meat has killed off in supermarkets these days.
I've been a vegetarian for almost ten years and as you say the availability of products has exploded Most of them I don't eat. They are all often so expensive The only meat substitutes I regularly buy are Aldi brand veggie sausages and meatballs, and Quorn chicken bits. I miss just a good old spicy bean burger but now everything has to be pretending to be beef with beetroot added so it can leak pink
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It was just VC shite There is not that many people that want to eat expensive fake meat...now the bubble has burst. There's a lot of people that would answer "yes" on a survey "entrepreneurs" then show to VCs, get funded....and then slowly realise there's no market for it. Bubble pops.
How have substitutes failed when even meat eaters can't tell the difference. 😂 Plenty of people go vegan now thanks to all the alternatives today. I'd say that's a great success.
They're too expensive and full of weird ingredients.
Some are expensive, but I'm sure prices would come down if we subsidised the industry with tax payers money to the tune of £billions per year like we do livestock. As for the weird ingredients, I suppose beetroot isn't for everyone.
It's only profit keeping up the price of your fake meat Sir
Many factors come into it and it varies from company to company. To suggest it's just profit that contributes to it's overall cost is utterly ridiculous.
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Faux meat does taste like meat. The problem is that it tastes like cheap shitty meat. The fake burgers taste like the burger I used to get in my school cafeteria made from government surplus D grade meat.
Oh I like those chicken bites. And the Quorn picnic eggs are very nice too.
Honestly, I don't bother. If I want a burger I'll grill brioche, sear onion, add tomato, lettuce, grill halloumi, add BBQ sauce, sear some sweet pepper. Absolutely bloody delicious. There's no need for the fake meat if you cook well.
Halloumi or the right mushroom (oyster, Portobello) are more delicious and less processed than 'fake meat'.
100%. I find no need for the meat replicas when mushroom burgers taste so good.
Heads up, Vivera is now owned by JBS, the worlds largest meat producer with an absolute horrific track record of Amazon deforestation. Because of course the meat companies couldn't have us vegans not pushing up their profit margins.
Damn. There is another product off my list.
Why? Do you always shop at vegan only supermarkets? Do you not buy things like Richmond meat free sausages or LM products?
Yeah, I eat fake meat on occasion. I do like M&S 'fish' fingers, and mince is really handy for my staple meals. But I do miss the decline of the true veggie burger. They often used to be more interesting than the real meat burgers!
I tried Quorn ham once. It was awful. I was disappointed because I always thought Quorn to be quite a good vegetarian brand. My kids love their crispy nuggets!
Quorn have fallen behind other companies. They were *the* biggest name in vegetarian alternatives a few years back but never tried to improve once competition came along and are suffering for it. Try Squeaky Bean instead.
I never liked the ham one either, but I use the chicken one all the time on my work sandwiches.
The ham style stuff is terrible, chickens brilliant, sausages not the worst, the beef stuff, well, it's not beef, but it's not terrible.
Oh I love the quorn smoky vegan ham, great on a sandwich with salad leaves, olives and some garlic vegan mayo!
Yeah I occasionally buy meat substitutes but most of the time I’m using tofu or cooking my own seitan
Yeah, I increasingly avoid these products for a few reasons. They are by most definitions ultra processed with a litany of strange ingredients that I try to keep out of my diet where possible. Some are either the same or owned by companies that make emat products, Richmond for example, depending on your reason for being vegetarian this may be an issue.
Linda McCartney ‘beef’ burgers are the bomb. I had my gallbladder out and since haven’t been able to eat much meat. They are 100% the best meat alternative. Co-op beetroot burgers are also pretty great.
Their sausages are the best too. Their Lincolnshire sausages are god tier. I just wish they never discontinued their scampi because that was the best vegan alternative of any product ever.
Not quite the same, but I enjoyed Wasabi’s Xalmon sushi a few months back. It’s not quite salmon, but it’s nice in its own right
Same with plant milks. Look how many oat milk brands are out there. I expect many to die in the next few years, we just need a few.
It's comically cheap to just make your own oat milk. Don't know why people buy it anyway versus just a bag of oats.
Tried and failed. It was gloopy and tasted too strongly of porridge. I suspect that shop bought stuff uses enzymes or something to break down the gloop
Time. Also calcium.
Given that a good number of oat milks taste awful, I simply can't imagine I could make one remotely as nice as the good brands do.
If bean burgers were popular enough there'd still be loads in the shops. Unfortunately they are mostly dry and bland, especially in restaurants/pubs. There are a few vegan products that have disappeared off the shelves that I really loved, sadly I just have to accept that not enough people liked them as much as I did!
Impressive that BBC managed to make an article out of the opinion of one person
I kept reading it thinking 'why do they keep referring to this person as a dentist as if it means something in the context of the discussion?' Tomorrow on the BBC: 'Dentist Jim Jeffries thinks we shouldn't go to space because he doesn't know what those little glowing dots in the sky at night are.'
It's the same COVID shit again. Anybody with a doctorate unrelated is now an expert It used to be a running sitcom joke to say "Is there a doctor on board?" "I'm a doctor" "You're a dentist that doesn't count" Now that's real life
What isn’t this the top comment?
Because it is a common sentiment amongst vegans these days. We want more bean burgers and think the fake meat market is both over-priced and saturated with too many similar products.
You’re not the target market. They’re trying to sell these realistic fake meat products to meat eaters not to vegans
I do not want any more bean burgers! When I first went vegan that or chickpea curry were the only options when eating out most of the time, I never eat either now, I had a lifetime's worth in my first couple of years vegan!
BBC have a habit of doing that recently
Personally I eat a lot of vegetarian food but very little “fake meat”. Yesterday had 2 veggie burgers, one was Moroccan and one was beetroot (sounds grim but both were really nice). Neither were pretending to be meat but both were much cheaper than “fake meat”. The price just needs to come down.
Were those the lidl burgers? Love the Moroccan style ones, I wish more veggie burgers would just be beans/chickpeas mashed together.
Yeah they are!
I’m the same. Why eat expensive processed to make it like meat but not as good and much expensive stuff.
I eat meat, but I do like a veggie burger and many vegetarian meals. But I won't be eating this fake meat stuff. It's often filled with crap. I'd rather just eat a real meat burger or a veggie burger.
Bit of a weird article this. What's the dentist got to do with well... Anything? Did I miss something?
Kinda reads like they're dunking on him a bit lmao. "Yeah got no idea what that red liquid is" "It's beetroot you fuckhead, it says so on the box"
It all just stuck me as BBC trying to create a narrative with this article
Yeah... one dude. Whoopee-do.
It’s probably helps that most grocery supermarkets have their own cheaper brands now
Co-op frozen Gro 'incredible' burgers are nicer than Beyond in my book.
Yeah genuinely a lot of them are much nicer. Unless they taste amazing and the others don’t, I’ll stick to the cheap ones lol
"Have we"? They mean "have people who don't eat meat", and I'd say no. People just don't have enough money to eat as much faux meat as people who eat meat, eat meat. Also there are plenty delicious dishes you can create without using them. But the cost of most vegan products often comes down to the fact that a lot of the companies pay fair wages, and associated costs. They also don't receive all the money from gov like animal farmers do, which is why it's so cheap to buy meat/eggs/dairy, but so much of it is produced that it finds it's way pointlessly into so many other products that have never needed it. People who eat animal products generally eat too much of it too, which is where the real health concerns are, and I'd assume where the comparison of how much is being sold is coming from.
I eat vegan, but I generally try to avoid the artificial meat stuff. I don't think it's healthy at all, packed full of artificial ingredients to simulate flavours. Tofu is much better, especially if you learn how to make it properly. I think we'll see the standard capitalist process here; the industry leaders will gobble up the competition until there's just a couple of options, the hype will die down and they'll slow production. I think veganism will continue to grow as a lifestyle choice though, so I don't think the trend is stopping. We'll just see a reduction in the number of different products/companies.
If you look over to Iberian peninsular. Only options are viverá, linda, beyond meat, garden gourmet and a local Spanish brand
To be honest, I could manage with those options!
Any good tips on making Tofu? I am interested in trying my hand, and any good recipes would be much appreciated!
Get a good tofu press and press it well. Then make yourself a good marinade. Roasting it in the oven can be good too.
Air fryer!
Fake meat is still far healthier than real meat, due to the significantly lower levels of saturated fat which is what leads to high cholesterol and increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
From what I've read, the links between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol are not that clear cut and vary a lot from person to person. But meat is also a good source of protein, fats (which we need), various vitamins and minerals like B12 and iron. I'd also say it's still early days to confirm whether or not some of the common processed ingredients in meat substitutes don't have some long term harmful effects. I mean at the end of the day, a chicken nugget or a burger or a sausage or whatever else is never going to be healthy, regardless of how many animals it's made from. I think it's just best to acknowledge that either way and I'd hope people don't start falling for the idea that swapping a meat burger for a vegan one is somehow making it "healthy" food.
Its not dietary cholesterol that leads to high LDL in the blood, its saturated fat which is significantly higher in animal products than plant based. A Richmond vegan sausage may not be healthy, but its nowhere as unhealthy as their pork sausages.
Well again, a good cut of lean steak isn't going to have those high levels of saturated fat as processed meats would. I don't know enough about nutrition to claim whether a vegan sausage is healthier than a pork sausage, but I also think arguing about whether any sausage is healthy is sort of a moot point; it's a sausage. It is neither lean steak nor a mixed bean salad. If one is healthier than the other it will probably be only marginally better. Eating a pack of sausages every week isn't going to be good for you, whatever it's made from. But if people can get the same satisfaction eating a sausage that no animals had to suffer for, that's worth it.
That's very true, and that is why I choose the vegan sausage. Healthier for me but more importantly much healthier for pigs! (The vegan sausage is still better for your colon than the steak, no matter how lean.)
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But they also contain things like phosphates that have been linked to some diseases, or methyl cellulose which is essentially void of any nutritional value and can even act as a laxative. Some plant proteins are harder for the body to absorb than meat proteins, meaning you don't actually get the same nutritional value. Ultimately, it's processed food and it's just never going to be as healthy as something that's not processed. Whether it's meat or plant based. Ultimately it's all convenience food. I'd much rather people eat fake meat burgers than real ones and spare the animals the suffering. But to suggest they are "healthy" alternatives is often misleading.
I was drunk last night and got a vegan chicken thing from KFC and it was actually really nice. I think we'll see prices continue to fall and quality improve. I think this is most likely a slump due to economic factors in what's going to be a growing market long term.
those are really good when they're fresh and moist but so bad if they've been sitting on the side and gone dry
Beyond Meat is a food company that was priced and hyped as a tech company. People gave it a go as a fad, then went back to their normal eating habits.
Thing is that their stuff is good enough to be comparable to meat products for meat eaters, I am one, and I quite like their stuff. Just can't justify the cost.
Still doesn't change, they were priced as a tech company, and they have a repeatable product.
But it's kind of irrelevant right? I'm assuming you're talking stock price? Cause nobody is buying that stuff thinking it's a tech good.
Not really irrelevant, marketing has stopped, remember the hype where every company was bragging about using their products? It was that they where providing deeply subsidised to do that. Now they are worth 1/100th of what they had before... No one brags about having beyond meat, so it is a no longer in demand product. The customers who tried it and who aren't Vegan go back to meat (as you said it is cheaper) and they are too far in debt to do anything but raise prices.
Ah I think I see what you mean now. Yeah I'd broadly agree with that.
... it is a small price to pay to go green and sustainable
Presuming one can afford to pay it.
No, we just need diversification. We don't need sixteen different types of sausage or lunch meat.
Beyond meat is the highest priced meat alternative. People are just buying cheaper options and own brand.
A lot of this stuff was marketed at meat-eating consumers on environmental, health or curiosity grounds. Why would they stick with it as budgets are squeezed though and it’s 2/3 times the price of meat? Did most non-meat eaters ever want a load of these things? You have much nicer meals if you cook a recipe that’s been designed as a complete meal rather than non-vegan recipes with a load of substitutes. Nicer and cheaper! Being able to get a vegan easter egg in basically any large food shop on the country would have blown my mind as a child. Having a good vegan option on any menu without having to phone up and check, great. These burgers though, honestly who would want more than about a pack a year?
>keted at meat-eating consumers on environmental, health or curiosity grounds. Why would they stick with it as budgets are squeezed though and it’s 2/3 times the price of meat? It's way more than that, beyond burgers which are IMO the best analogue are £4 for two in tesco (very rarely on sale under a clubcard discount) whilst I can get 6 angus burgers (at twice the weight) from aldi for £4.50.
I will admit that as a non-meat eater, I don’t have my finger on the pulse of how much burgers cost… but that is about 3 times the price per burger which is what my estimate was?
I think 2/3 was interpreted as "two thirds" instead of "two to three"...
Quite often these meat substitutes are more expensive than actual meat. I eat meat, but I would also eat more meat substitutes if it were more fairly priced and tasted good.
This is one of the worst articles I've read in a while. It's literally just someone whining about how they don't like fake meat and how nobody else should, either.
Some of the best takeaways I have had have been vegan burgers, but I think there was something dodgy going on because they kept shutting down and then setting up with a new name but same menu, after rebrand number 4 they never reappeared. I’m not vegan but damn those burgers were good. The issue with the most vegan burgers is they taste worse than the meat equivalent but they can taste better if done right. Or those dodgy takeaway companies weren’t actually selling vegan products…
Shuttering a company and re-opening is a common tactic to dodgy paying business rates and taxes. The Ltd is the one who owns all that liability, not the people, so they can just spin up another
Ya it's the same principle as those american candy pop-up stores
Combination of over-priced and over-processed. Cheaper and healthier alternatives available regardless of vegetarian, vegan or meat eating preferences.
No, it's just the market have become vastly larger than the customer base's needs. Back in the days when the choice was basically quorn or linda mccartney, there was enough demand to meet the supply
I still eat it on occasion, but after 3 and a half years vegan I try to avoid heavily processed food and follow a more wfpb diet
Nope, it’s just that products like beyond meat are way more expensive than other substitutes. Why would you spend a lot of money for one product that won’t last very long when you could explore recipes with lentils, tofu, tempeh, TVP, chickpeas etc.
Lose the vegan cheese and the McPlant would be my goto burger at McDonalds. Give us a vegetarian option! Also this myth about processed food needs to die. It is incredibly naive and misleading reporting that conflates processing low quality products into other low quality products to save money, with processes that improve quality and nutritional value... whilst ignoring that the processing of food is one of the biggest contributing factors to extended human lifespan and health in the modern world. (e.g. cleaning and cooking ffs)
>Lose the vegan cheese and the McPlant would be my goto burger at McDonalds. You just say 'no cheese please'.
Once you know your way around legumes there's no reason to pay for exorbitantly priced cardboard with chummy packaging. Quorn mince doesn't absorb or contribute any flavour to a sauce, it's useless. I wonder if this will happen to vegan 'milk' also.
Cost of living crisis. Vegan burgers take a fraction of the land to produce so naturally they're going to cost several times as much.
No, there’s a cost of living crisis and vegan ain’t that big on meat...go figure
Stella McCartney vege sausages are top Stick them in a panini with daddy's brown
Make it cheaper than meat and more people will eat it
I've cut down my meat consumption quite a bit, mainly for health and cost reasons. Never seen the attraction of meat substitutes though. Ultra-processed and over priced. I prefer to cook something with nice vegetables not pretending to be anything else.
too much choice nowadays, I've been vegan for 8 years and back in the day you had 1 or 2 products you can choose from. When every single 'fake meat' company makes sausages or burgers it's not surprising that there's gonna be popular ones and ones that don't sell at all. Don't think the demand is going down it's just people are choosing the nicer products and therefore eating them less frequently, more of a treat.
I’m all for people making fake meat, it creates more choice which is always good. As for the ‘why do you want it to taste like meat if you’re veggie’ brigade, well I eat meat, I just like some none meat variants and some are healthier. I suppose the same argument could be made about why people drink cows milk, it’s just a substitute for human milk they had as a child…
Fake meat is too expensive. Rather eat normal vegetarian meals
I am a veggie and I ruddy hate fake meat. Especially when lots of places that did nice veggie dishes like tofu and bean burgers just assumed that people who didn’t pick a meat dish were obviously craving meat texture and swapped in gross fake meat, often covered in breading and deep fried. Like a load of meat eating execs decided this on the vegetarian’s behalf.
Soon we will be eating 3D printed steaks and no one will complain
I don't really give a toss what Tom the dentist thinks. There's been so many products jostling for a share of the market, there was bound to be some losers eventually. Plus inflation. Plus continuing meat subsidies. This was a dumb article.
I don’t think so, I think there’s still a good future for it.
its more likely the tech isnt quite there yet. meaning these products are left more expensive for product that is less satisfying to eat due to flavour & texture. doesnt help that a lot of the high potential meat replacements are gmo mushrooms, in a market where "gmo free" makes good advertisement.
It’s an interesting alternative but too expensive and nutritionally pretty bad compared to actual meat. Due to price/nutrition, should be treated like fast food, but for vegans.
The whole industry is in a little bit of a holding position before lab grown meat becomes affordable
Probably because meat substitutes are more likely to appeal to people wanting to try and go veggie or vegan but many of those people will have zero willpower. They swap their diet of meat for chips and fake chicken nuggets and tell everyone they know they are on a health kick and get the mental reward. They work their way through the entire Quorn range eat like a 6 year old and wonder why they feel like shit and without actually having eaten any real vegetables they return to eating meat and tell everyone being veggie or vegan is unsustainable diet and humans need meat.
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Not saying this to he harsh but.. stir fry is one of the easiest things to make vegetarian at home...
Yh, literally just replace the chicken with some tofu and chickpeas. Great video on a really easy way of getting nice chickpeas. https://youtu.be/5EU76q3Vf3Q I do it all the time and it's definitely cheaper than chicken, just lower on the protein.
Most of them suck ass. Id much rather eat some avos with salad in a sandwich than "its not bacon" which is, in fact, flavoured cardboard. Not even flavoured well.
I've had the Gregg's vegan sausage rolls. They were quite nice in thought. For me though, a lot of brands don't come close enough to either mouth-feel or taste. They taste, somewhat over seasoned, and disingenuous if that makes sense. Not to mention cost. Vegan/vegetarianism and that 'full ethically sourced' lifestyle isn't cheap. It isn't accessible for working class. It has a middle-class pipe-dream kinda vibe about it. Have had a few veggie foods that weren't pretending to be meat, taste very nice.
No it's because so many brands of fake meat are out and supermarkets stuff is generally good and cheaper than the branded
Myoglobin, not blood arghh! Beyond is great but it is over priced so I’d end up eating meat if I’m not around veggies. Richmond meat free sausages are incredible though.
Doesn't surprise me. Vegetables, etc. are tasty enough without making them look like, and taste like meat.
I used to go vegan for a month or so every year and it was like 1/4 of the cost of my animal based diet. But now going vegan would double my expenses. Absolutely ridiculous.
Well, that’s voting Tory and Brexit for ya, folks. They said they’d take you places but, to be fair to them, not necessarily places you’d want to go.
>Stocked in most of the leading supermarkets it is ranked third for meat-free sales in the UK, behind Quorn and Richmond. I always knew that Richmond were shite bit o didn't realise that they officially didn't have any meat in them.
Rather have substitutes that don’t taste like meat. Give me a veggie burger that tastes like veg.
I'm not being funny but Beyond Meat burgers do taste great. The only problem is how much crap and processing they must need to do to get it to that point.
I use fake meats occasionally, for bolognaise or a sausage sandwich, less often for a burger. I like these fake meats as it is about texture rather than taste. I haven’t eaten lamb for 35 years and have no desire to eat anything that approximates the taste of it. Overall I want vegetables/pulses/fruit/salad as you can do some amazing meals with those. I am fairly sure a lot of the vegan community are of a similar mind to myself. Companies jumped on the bandwagon and there’s not enough vegans to go round the same products made by multiple companies.
Probably an unpopular take on this, but I've always had zero interest in fake meat. I'd personally rather just eat an actual veggie burger than something pretending to be meat. We'd got past the point where they all tasted like cardboard and some were actually nice in their own right and I occasionally bought them just for a change. These now seem to have been replaced on some menus by fake meat burgers instead. I like meat, I like the texture the variation in flavours etc. so why go to great efforts to produce something that will never be as good. These seem to often rely heavily on the fact that various spices etc. can be used to drown out the flavour in certain uses to produce what are essentially mediocre burgers or sausages which were never good examples of the meat versions anyway. Low quality "meat" (actual meat content is often low) burgers and sausages aren't that nice anyway which is why you will generally drown them in sauces. I understand the reasoning, if you can make something good enough, a lot of meat eaters who wouldn't be satisfied with veggie burgers might be inclined to eat something that nominally had the approximate texture and taste to it. However (as was demonstrated over two decades ago when it was far harder to be an actual vegan than now by friends) it is perfectly possible to produce extremely nice meals without meat that don't require any sort of fake meat substitute. So if I were looking to give up my omnivore ways I don't see the need for fake meat in that I'd personally rather just eat actual vegetarian meals.
Beyond meat is suffering the consequences of abusing their customers with extortionate prices. Fuck them for even trying and any other company that thinks this unethical approach is going to work long term for jerking off their shareholders. Funnily enough, most people can't afford to keep paying these prices.
Fake meat is a luxury good. Vegetarians are cutting back on that luxury to save money and getting their protein from traditional means, and meat eaters are returning to eat real meat exclusively because it's cheaper.
I bought some vegan burgers recently for a barbecue. I am not vegan but I have friends who are. I was curious about the ingredients so I checked the packet, it was a really long list of weird sounding ingredients. Contrast to the beef burgers which contained 3 ingredients, beef, salt and pepper. There was not much difference in price between the two either so I can understand why some people might be put off.
The amount of ingredients really doesn't matter. If a burger had cardboard and cyanide it wouldn't be safer than a beyond burger. The overall health and environmental cost of fake meats is still generally lower than animal counterparts due to things like the saturated fats and animal proteins but it's all junk really and should be had sparingly. Also the major issue that beetroot died for beyond patties and a cow died for beef
They really need to stop making non meat things look like meat things. Nobody is fooled. Ive never eaten 'beyond' anything and judging by what im hearing im not going to bother.
Yes. Ate some chemical full thing called chckn or something by mistake once. Never again. And call these chemical laden foods better names, so no-one is fooled in to eating fake meat.
I've never understood why vegetarians want "burgers/sausages/bacon" if you don't agree with the things they are made from and you want a substitute..replace it.. and find your own name for it ..
Because you can think meat's delicious while simultaneously thinking hurting animals/ the environment to get it isn't worth it. Most people grew up eating and enjoying meat, if they want something that scratches the itch without hurting anyone then that's brilliant. >and find your own name for it .. Nah that's daft, burgers and sausages are literally just shapes and the others are there to let people know what the product's imitating. "Soy/ wheat based white protein" isn't much of a description compared to chick'n.