
Obvious Goes Beyond Meat - atestu
http://obvious.com/beyondmeat.html
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samstokes
Obligatory Title Police comment: not knowing that Obvious and Beyond Meat were
companies, this headline gave no clues as to the topic of the article. In fact
I only clicked to see how on earth that title could parse as English...

I know the submission just took the title from the original article, but when
the article title is that obscure a little editorial summarisation wouldn't go
amiss.

~~~
nswanberg
I'm as much a fan of clear, meaningful titles as the next person, but when
life hands you such an unforced, ambiguous, deliciously absurd title, I think
it's best to savor it.

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nosse
The text sites this "51%" of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

It comes from here:
[http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climat...](http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf)

I can cut this short for you. It's a lie dressed as calculation.

It calculates cow breathing for instance. And more heat produced while cooking
meat compared to vegetables. Still they don't really show you the numbers.

EDIT: <http://beyondmeat.com/> doesn't state how large environmental effect
their product has.

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bawllz
Its like nearly all statistics, I have learned to ignore the large part of
them. I hate it when people drop percentages based on correlations which they
don't reference the actual methods. In my opinion, its what defines bad
media/writing.

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slyn
Slightly OT: Maybe I'm just underestimating to the power of familiarity as a
plus in marketing, but I've never been able to wrap my head around meat-
imitation vegetarian and vegan options.

I understand things like veggie dogs or burgers, patty and tube shaped foods
are just plain convenient to store and eat. But I don't really get: "...
Beyond Meat™, the first plant protein that looks, feels, tastes, and acts like
meat." Wouldn't it be more prudent to create an identity for next level plant-
based products than essentially "It's like meat but not"?

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cdcarter
I'd say that a lot of the vegetarian food community is leaning towards that!
Morningstar Veggie Patties (my favorite "faux-meat") doesn't taste like meat,
nor does it really try to. It tastes like a tasty patty of mushrooms and
veggies (and a bunch of soy thrown in for extra protein).

~~~
chc
A great example of fake meat that isn't actually anything like meat is
Morningstar's black bean burgers. They taste nothing like meat (which is good,
because overly realistic veggie meat is uncanny valley to me), but they still
give the effect of a hamburger and taste delicious.

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mark_l_watson
While I applaud anyone who gives up eating lots of animal protein (I believe
it is bad for their health, and I know it is bad for our environment by using
about 10x more water and energy for production), there is this:

why not just eat regular vegetarian foods? Why fake meat?

We eat vegetarian with little bits of seafood (Pescatarians), BTW.

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famousactress
I've often wondered (and been asked) this. I haven't eaten meat for about
twenty years now.

My wife and I purchase and eat plenty of fake-meat products. It's frankly,
simple. Easy to prepare, easy to eat. Fairly high in calories and protein for
effort-expended compared to many alternatives.

The other interesting question was posed by another commenter who asked why
fake-meat in terms of flavors, instead of finding their own identity. The
interesting thing is that I don't think most of these things have much flavor
either way. Does chicken have much flavor? The veggie-chicken doesn't. It's
more of a high-protein, high-calorie carrier of other flavors. Dip it in
siracha, fry it and make orange 'chicken'. All in all it doesn't contribute
much flavor to the meal, just substance.

All of that said, I think of it as junk food (not compared to meat, but
compared to other vegetable based meals). I'd much rather get better about
putting together more balanced dishes.

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UnFleshedOne
The tasty parts of chicken have a lot of flavor, you can pretty much boil and
eat drumsticks (in skin) with no seasoning whatsoever. It is white meat that
is tasteless and needs a lot of postprocessing. (or mayo, mayo makes
everything taste good...)

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famousactress
That makes sense. I think it's the white meat that's imitated.

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Nogwater
How much will it cost in my local grocery store? Will it be cheaper than
regular (non-fancy/organic/free range) chicken by the pound and by the
calorie?

Does it have all of the same amino acids that chicken has in close enough to
the same amounts to completely replace real meat without having to think about
changing the rest of your diet to compensate?

Genuinely curious.

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earnon
Meat is not bad for the environment. Factory farms are indeed terrible, but
they're not the only way to raise animals. On the other hand, grain
agriculture is beyond fixing See <http://lierrekeith.com/vegmyth.htm> for a
great intro.

Meat is also healthy. Grains are not. See any of these

Good Calories Bad Calories/Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes, The Paleo Solution
by Robb Wolf, <http://www.marksdailyapple.com/cholesterol/#axzz1wxjdQqRB>

Eat real food.

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chc
No matter how you slice it (no pun intended), raising an animal for human
consumption is a net energy loss. AFAICT, it's just a mathematical fact.
Unless you have magic cows that photosynthesize, you are taking resources that
could have gone toward supporting a human being and instead using them to grow
an animal.

I mean, if you're happy with your Neo-Atkins Diet, that's cool, but enough
already with this looking down on people who don't eat as trendily as you do.

~~~
earnon
What if the animal ate only grass?

Also, keep in mind that modern grain agriculture is 100% dependent on fossil
fuels.

Back in the day, animals were raised on the farm along with vegetables. The
animals ate the cellulose (inedible to us) and scraps and created protein.
They also created fertilizer (today it is synthesized from fossil fuels and
wreaks environmental havoc - the Dead Zone at the mouth of the Mississippi is
mostly caused by nitrogen runoff from farms) and ate bugs, so there was no
need for pesticides.

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zzzeek
I can't cite an authoritative source but I think the idea is the amount of
unforested, undeveloped grassland on the planet is nowhere near enough to
support the current meat intake of the world population. There are actually
similar issues with organic vegetables too.

Of course if people wanted to eat _much less_ meat, and if there were a lot
_fewer_ people, things might work better sure.

~~~
earnon
That's probably true. However, like I said above, our agriculture is also
unsustainable. Most of the increase in crop yields over the past few decades
have come as a result of fossil fuel-based fertilizers. Without oil yields
would plummet. Overpopulation is the problem.

Ideally, animals should be raised either on land that's not suitable for
agriculture, or on the farm, eating the inedible plant parts and providing
more of a closed-loop ecosystem.

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cdcarter
Not to parrot Michael Pollan too much, but I think I'll stick to eating
_food_. His latest book provides plenty of skepticism on whether eating animal
protein actually leads to cancer, obesity, type II, &c... or if it is perhaps
due to an overly reductive food culture in the West.

What nutritionists are saying is good for us is changing ever decade. I'm
going to stick to eating minimally processed food in moderation.

~~~
earbitscom
Vegetables are _food_. And even better still, they have zero cholesterol and
basically provide much the same benefits without the bad side effects. Say
what you want about the flip-flopping nature of nutrition trends, there is
very little scientific data that shows that milk, cheese and red meat don't
cause heart disease and other health concerns. Broccoli tends not to.

~~~
cdcarter
Oh I completely agree. Vegetables are great _food_. Whole grains are great
sources of yummy carbs. And meats in moderation are likely Just Fine. Broccoli
is _food_ , highly processed soy injected with omega-3s and corn is a food-
product, not _food_.

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earbitscom
Fair enough. I'm not saying eating anything vegetarian, no matter how
processed, is good for you. Just clarifying that, in my opinion, avoiding meat
if you can is healthier.

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phil
These guys are doing such awesome stuff.

I like eating meat, but would love to live in a world where Big Macs are made
from vegetable protein and all meat is raised locally/humanely and fed a
healthy diet.

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epoxyhockey
Seeing as how Taco Bell recently got dinged for using mostly soy (only 35% was
beef) in their beef tacos, have no fear, your McD's meal will probably be the
first to become all-veggie as soon as they can lower the FDA's definition of
what qualifies as meat.

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quadrant6
The article gave me hope. Then when I clicked through to the website and
looked at the ingredients, I was let down. The 'chicken strips' seem only
marginally better than the soy sausages in our supermarkets already. I guess I
was expecting some miraculous new ingredient. It's nice they have amaranth in
there but it doesn't exactly seem groundbreaking.

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ben1040
An interesting article from two years ago about the product development (the
names in the "About" page here match up to the Mizzou team in the article):

[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993883,00....](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993883,00.html)

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Zaheer
Is this perhaps VC Vinod Khosla's stealth meat startup?

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/09/13/vinod-
khos...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/09/13/vinod-khosla-clean-
tech-not-a-disaster-i-have-stealth-meat-startup/)

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tomjen3
I don't get it, but that may be because I don't have a problem eating meat --
our emotions are not evolved to live in the world we live in now, so they
shouldn't be used to derive what we should eat.

~~~
cpeterso
Our emotions are not evolved to use iPhones or modern medicine either.

Animals eat other animals because have no alternative. Humans have the
knowledge, technology, and (I hope) empathy to eat without killing animals.

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epoxyhockey
I'm more excited about synthetic meat R&D. Rather than trying to make soy-
based products more like meat in taste and texture, why not just create meat
in a test-tube, sans the animal?

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earlyriser
This has been discussed previously:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3873470> It seems to be really hard to
create tissues.

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cvg
I like that Beyond Meat is trying to offer better vegan options. The product
looks interesting, but after reading the ingredients,
<http://beyondmeat.com/products/> , I doubt I will try it. Titanium Dioxide
(what color is it normally), Dipotassium Phosphate and tons of Phytoestrogens
(Soy) don't sound so tasty.

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geekfactor
Beyond Meat is people!

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freshfunk
#FirstWorldProblems

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J3L2404
This web page is a good example of simplicity gone too far. I guess you don't
know where the boundaries are until you have crossed them. This design is off-
puttingly empty. I am not saying you have to fill it with bling, but you have
to have something to focus on. Just my two cents.

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Joeboy
> This web page is a good example of simplicity gone too far

It's extremely readable and loads very quickly. I wish more pages would go too
far.

Edit: Although given its otherwise commendable minimalism it seems odd that it
goes to the trouble of using a non-system font.

